”A Distillation of Drops of Honey”: Rethinking Teacher Dispositions Through an Ethics of Narration

• In Event: Listening, Hearing, and Speaking: Voices From Teacher Education

Abstract

The concept of a good 'teaching disposition' is widely contested. Reading the disposition literature for conflict and not for the content of dispositions, I suggest that the strife attending these debates points to disposition being rooted in gut feelings or hunches: forms of bodily recognition that can only ever be provisionally symbolized. However, the nature of education engenders a need to ‘nail down’ disposition in language so that it can be brought into ‘good’ teacher preparation. I argue that dispositions are ‘better’ when they are in flux, where ‘better’ means less likely to espouse a claim to certainty. I conclude by offering an uncertain ‘disposition’ grounded in an ethics of narration that seeks to destabilize the concept altogether.

Author

• Lee Airton, York University