Teaching and Assessing Dispositions in Principal Preparation Programs: An Exploratory Study 115
Board for Educational Administration on December 12, 2007 (CCSSO, 2008). One main
feature of the updated standards is that the language is “performance-based” (Sanders &
Kerney, 2007, p. 7). Although the specific delineation of dispositions has been deleted in the
2008 standards, there is clear evidence that the dispositions underlying the 1996 standards
remain an implicit conceptual foundation.
WHAT ARE DISPOSITIONS?
There are many definitions of the term disposition, ranging from the generic dictionary
versions to ones specifically targeted to the dispositions to be assessed in educators; for
purposes of this article, the latter are more specific and therefore more relevant. Baksh (2004)
traced the assessment of dispositions back to Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Categories and
Rhetoric. Beginning in 1959, under the leadership of Combs (see Combs, Blume, Newman, &
Wass, 1974), considerable work was done in the area of teachers’ perceptual orientations; this
work was the forerunner, and virtual equivalent, of what later became known as dispositions
(Wasicsko, 2002). The first major appearance of the term dispositions in education came in
1992, when the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) published the first draft of
the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium’s (INTASC) Ten Core
Principles, which called for the assessment of new or prospective teachers’ knowledge,
dispositions, and performances (INTASC, 1992). More recently, NCATE’s 2002 definition of
dispositions, from the glossary of Professional Standards for the Accreditation of Schools,
Colleges, and Departments of Education was:
Dispositions. The values, commitments, and professional ethics that influence
behaviors toward students, families, colleagues, and communities and affect
student learning, motivation, and development as well as the educator’s own
professional growth. Dispositions are guided by beliefs and attitudes related to
values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice. For
example, they might include a belief that all students can learn, a vision of high
and challenging standards, or a commitment to a safe and supportive learning
environment. (NCATE, 2002, p. 53)
However, the most recent standards adopted by NCATE (May 11, 2007) listed the
definition of professional dispositions as: “To be developed” (p. 45).WHY HAVE STANDARDS BEEN STIPULATED IN SOME OF THE
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP STANDARDS?
In his defense of the ISLLC standards, ten years after their release, Murphy (2003)
discussed the criticism that has arisen concerning including non-research-based dispositions
with the standards (English, 2001; Hess, 2003). He cited such foundational works on
educational administration as those of Culbertson (1963) and Foster (1984), which recognized
that educational leadership is “fundamentally a moral activity” (p. 33) and cited the reviews of
Beck and Murphy (1997) as concluding that the “fight to create a scientifically anchored
value-free profession had brought forth an ethically truncated if not morally bankrupt
profession” (p. 33). This concern, he stated, led ISLLC to acknowledge the importance of
non-empirical materials [the dispositions] and to use this material to anchor and provide a