Assessment of Teacher Candidate Dispositions: Evidence of Reliability and Validity.

Since the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), now known as the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), adopted its Standards 2000 that required "professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn" for teacher candidates, literature has been replete with debates concerning the definition and assessment of professional dispositions (e.g., Burant, Chubbuck, & Whipp, 2007; Duplass & Cruz, 2010; Ruitenberg, 2011; Welch, Pitts, Tenini, Kuenlen, & Wood, 2010). A byproduct of the ongoing and contentious debates over the definition of dispositions is reflected in the subsequent revisions of the NCATE/CAEP standards (NCATE 2008 and CAEP 2013 Standards); that is, although NCATE/CAEP continues to incorporate the assessment of teacher candidates' dispositions into its standards, it has gradually moved away from explicitly defining what dispositions are necessary for becoming an effective teacher. A case in point is that no glossary includes the term professional dispositions in its 2013 standards, a notable departure from the previous standards (see Appendix A for complete definitions included in the 2002 Edition Standards and 2008 Standards). It is, then, no surprise that the definition of dispositions varies greatly among teacher education programs. It is up to individual teacher education programs to identify a set of dispositions they surmise to be critical for their candidates' success. The absence of a clear, universally accepted definition of what dispositions are, however, calls into question not only the assessment of dispositions but also the utility of assessing them. Critics contend that without definitional clarity, a reliable and valid method for measuring dispositions does not exist (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007). So, then, is assessing dispositions nothing but a futile exercise for the sake of meeting the NCATE/CAEP requirements? Despite the "skepticism about the ability to assess dispositions as if they are comparable to skills and knowledge" (Duplass & Cruz, 2010, p. 144), and despite scant empirical data that dispositions can be assessed in a reliable and valid manner, all NCATE/CAEP accredited institutions continue to assess their teacher candidates' dispositions. Duplass and Cruz went on to say, "Whether dispositions can or cannot be defined or effectively assessed is apparently a moot point for NCATE, but it has left COEs [colleges of education] with the herculean task of implementing an ill-defined concept" (p. 144). Dispositions Assessment in a Historical and Research Context To understand what dispositions are or what a disposition might be, perhaps a first step is to juxtapose dispositions with two other words most commonly associated with dispositions: knowledge and skills. The field of teacher education has long held that there are ways to assess the identifiable, relevant, and important skills and knowledge necessary for teaching. Though content and pedagogical skills tests have experienced multiple iterations, overall they are considered reliable and valid, and some version of a content and skills test exists in every state for certification purposes. However, dispositions have been more difficult to define, let alone to assess validly and reliably. According to NCATE (2008), we can understand dispositions as those "professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and nonverbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities" (p. 89). In other words, dispositions are those internal conditions (attitudes, values, beliefs, thoughts, etc.) that influence our external behaviors (actions and interactions with students and others). Historically, the struggle has been concerned with whether those internal conditions are naturally endowed, whether they can be implanted, and whether they can be shaped if endowed or implanted. …