Teacher Educators' Dispositions: Footnoting the Present with Stories from our Pasts
Source: Studying Teacher Education, Volume 8, Issue 1, 2012, pages 69-85.
University educators are charged with preparing pre- and in-service teachers for today's school populations; however, university faculty may assume the role of fostering and evaluating their students' dispositions toward diversity without having first examined their dispositions toward their own students.
This article uses critical autoethnographic self-study methodology to examine teacher educators' dispositions toward their students.
The participants were seven teacher educators in one university department, from multiple disciplines. They reversed common notions of studying the dispositions of their students and turned the focus onto their own struggles with their dispositions as teachers of teachers.
Findings illustrate the powerful positions and judgmental stances teacher educators held as they navigated their teaching as well as a need for teacher educators to devote time to deliberate critical self-study of their own dispositions.