Dispositions

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education defines dispositions as "the values, commitments, and professional ethics that influence behavior toward students, families, colleagues, and communities and affect student learning, motivation and development as well as the educator's own professional growth." In the long run, only through experience in the field of teaching can educators truly begin to understand the teaching competencies set forth by the NCATE. This is not to say that education classes cannot help a student learn by providing certain opportunities, however. While teacher education programs can discuss the competencies, students need the opportunity to put the competencies into practice. For example, we can talk about what it means to be reflective in a classroom, but students should take it upon themselves to be reflective of their own work on their own time. Instead of simply talking about collaborativeness, a professor may ask students to work in groups and discuss how the groups affected student learning. While teacher education classes can help teach and provide opportunities to practice most competencies, they can only be fully understood after a teacher has made an attempt to apply them in his own classroom. Music majors often need to be resilient as there is a great deal of stress involved. However, this stress level will not likely be comparable to the resilience needed in the first few years of teaching. Providing teacher education students with field experience is the best and to prepare students for teaching and putting their competencies into practice. However, there are certain competencies that even field experience will not help a teacher to understand. No one can be taught to be passionate, for example. Either you have that passion or you do not. What we can do is lead students toward an understanding of why passion is important and how they may be able to show passion in their teaching. Yet again, we can only do this by providing certain opportunities for teach education students. There is a Chinese proverb that says, “Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.” As long as we remember this, teacher education programs can be successful in leading students to understanding dispositions. The rest is up to the students.