The relationship between teacher education candidates' scores on the Eastern Kentucky University Dispositions Instrument and their effectiveness as student teachers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive validity of the Eastern Kentucky University Dispositions Instrument (EKU Dispositions Instrument) by examining its relationship with a measure of teaching effectiveness. The EKU Dispositions Instrument is based on a writing prompt which requires a teacher education candidate to describe a human relations incident in essay format. Trained raters review the essay and use a standard scale to rate the candidate's dispositions on four dimensions: perceptions of self, others, purpose, and reference.; In this study, teaching effectiveness was measured by university supervisors at The University of Mississippi using the Student Teacher Assessment Instrument (STAI). The STAI is a field based instrument administered by trained university staff, who observe a teaching candidate within a classroom setting and rate the candidate's teaching effectiveness. The data from both instruments were collected during the Spring 2004 semester.; Correlation and multiple regression analyses were performed to determine the strength of the relationship between dispositions ratings and the STAI based measure of effective teaching. A multiple regression analysis showed a weak but significant relationship between the linear combination of Perception of Self, Others, Purpose, and Reference (predictor variables) and the STAI mean scores of the group of elementary and secondary student teacher ( R = .319, p = .01). The predictor variables accounted for 7% of the variance of STAI mean scores for the student teachers (Adjusted R2 = .07).