Activating teaching dispositions in carefully constructed contexts: Examining the impact of classroom intensives

Abstract

The current policy stance in Australia which seeks to produce ‘classroom ready’ teachers requires that pre-service teachers (PSTs) be assessed against national professional standards that articulate minimum skills and knowledge required of beginning teachers. There is no mention within these standards of affective qualities (e.g. humour, passion, inspiration) or thinking dispositions (e.g. curiosity, reflection, creativity) that enable good teaching and professional learning and which capture the complexity that is inherent within good teaching. This study focuses on the research of a team of teacher educators in a regional Australian university who believe that a focus on dispositions is central to effective teacher education. They have embedded a ‘Dispositions for Teaching Framework’ within a Master of Teaching (Secondary) program to allow PSTs’ various thinking dispositions to be activated within carefully constructed professional learning contexts. The context in this study was a Classroom Intensive experience at a P-12 School in regional Victoria where PSTs participated in structured classroom observations over a two day period. The key research questions were: Did the Classroom Intensive experience activate the dispositions in the PSTs? Were some dispositions activated more than others? How could evidence be collected of these dispositions in action? A variety of research methods enabled a complex data-set to be collected. It was identified that the Classroom Intensive experience provided a rich professional learning context which activated all five of the thinking dispositions in the framework, and that these dispositions are not discrete but interconnect and rely upon each other.