Deconstructing Teacher Dispositions: Preservice Teachers and the Possibilities for Racial Justice Pedagogies

• In Event: Teaching in a "Revolutionary Situation": The Role of Racial Justice in Teacher Education

Abstract

Purpose
Current political conditions demand that teacher preparation programs adequately prepare pre-service teachers (PSTs) to practice racially just pedagogies. Consequently, programs must engage in a critical appraisal of teacher disposition assessment tools. In the past decade, these tools have increasingly focused on PSTs’ knowledge of K-12 students’ racial, cultural, and linguistic identities, often with an expectation of acceptance of diversity, rather than to advocate for social justice. We problematize the use of disposition assessment tools at our predominantly white institution in the Midwest. We draw upon Salazar’s (2018) and Lybeck and Colum’s (2021) analysis of the Danielson Framework to examine how one commonly used framework for evaluating dispositions might work in opposition to antiracist education and examine how these tools may simultaneously promote antiracism and uphold whiteness.

Questions for Inquiry
This paper interrogates the inherent tensions when considering PSTs’ dispositions while advancing antiracist practices. Questions of inquiry include: 1) What tensions exist when evaluating PSTs’ dispositions related to antiracism? 2) How do teacher educators consider these tensions? 3) What criteria and structures offer possibilities to advance antiracism in disposition tools?

Theoretical Framework
Diez’s (2007) three tensions regarding the evaluation of teacher dispositions create a theoretical foundation for the composite narratives of our experiences with supporting and evaluating PSTs’ dispositions. The tensions we explore are: 1) The Purpose vs. Process 2) Dispositions as Stable vs. Evolving 3) Dispositions as Separate vs. Holistic 4) Dispositions as Screening Tools. We explore Diez’s tensions through the lens of antiracist education, propose a new tension using relevant examples from our own racialized experiences, and offer a set of critical questions that teacher education programs can utilize to evaluate or create disposition assessment tools.

Possibilities
Antiracist teaching and the assessment of antiracist dispositions are context-specific and require hard conversations within each context. Therefore, we do not offer a universal disposition tool. We offer questions that can serve as a starting point, such as: How are antiracist dispositions being defined? How is vulnerability encouraged? How are teacher educators ensuring that PSTs can be vulnerable as they develop their racial consciousness if it is being assessed? These questions can work toward ensuring that teacher educators are using disposition assessment tools in critically reflective ways. Even when tools are created to center antiracist dispositions, such tools–and the ways that they are being used–need to be reevaluated and modified to continually analyze the implications. Our questions encourage a critical reflection of the continued role of disposition assessment.

Significance
This paper adds to the literature on teacher dispositions and more specifically responds to the call from educational scholars to more adequately prepare PSTs to teach through an anti-racist lens (Ladson-Billings, 2009; Love, 2019). With the converging push to standardize teacher education and to better prepare PSTs for antiracist teaching, the assessment of PSTs’ antiracist dispositions has frequently been viewed as a necessary and useful endeavor. We echo the concerns of scholars highlighting how these efforts often uphold and reinforce whiteness ideology in teacher education (Souto-Manning, 2019; Weilbacher, 2012).

Authors

• Bernadette Castillo, University of Houston
  Presenting Author

• Rebekah May Degener, Minnesota State University - Mankato
  Presenting Author

• Beth Beschorner, Minnesota State University - Mankato
  Presenting Author