Dispositions as Habits of Mind: Making Professional Conduct More Intelligent

Dispositions as Habits of Mind provides opportunities for candidates in teacher education programs, which focus on nurturing and assessing dispositions, to see the habits of mind for making professional conduct more intelligent, practice them, and receive feedback about their performance. Some scholars have pointed out that the rush by many teacher education programs to meet accreditation mandates with regard to "dispositions" has generated a host of measures for assessing dispositions and very little focus on programs first establishing some conceptual understanding of the construct, and then teaching candidates about dispositions. This work on dispositions highlights the serious effort to help teachers and other professional school personnel to form habits and use them as active means in making their professional conduct more effective and intelligent.