Dispositions
An Inquiry of NCATE’s Move into Virtue Ethics by Way of Dispositions (Is
this what Aristotle meant?)
NCATE is not merely an accrediting agency – it is a force for the reform of
teacher preparation. As institutions meet the standards of NCATE, they are
reforming themselves . . . . In NCATE’s performance-based system,
accreditation is based on results -- results that demonstrate that the teacher
candidate knows the subject matter and can teach it effectively so that
students learn. (NCATE President Arthur Wise 2001)
An impulse to professionalize the field of teaching has been a part of the American
landscape since the colonial Puritans first required clergymen, who in many townships
held the dual post of Teacher, to earn credentials through a university education (Morgan
1988). During the early twentieth century the effort to professionalize strengthened with
the spread of the mass public school systems throughout the nation and the increase in
the number of normal schools and university schools of education. This endeavor has
persisted into the new century, given an updated urgency by such national reports as
Carnegie Foundation’s 1986 report, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, by
national agencies such as the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education
(NCATE) and by “effective teacher” research (see e.g. Wise 1999, 2001;Gitomer &
Latham 1999; Feistritzer 1999; Darling-Hammond 1992, 2002; Educational Testing
Service 2000; Rivkin et al. 1998;Sanders & Rivers 1996; Yinger and Hendricks-Lee 2000;
ETS 2000; Katz 1993; Collinson et al. 1999; Collinson n.d. ;Slavin 2002).
This latest round of reform has moved beyond earlier attempts to codify
professional knowledge and skills. Teacher education reform agencies, including NCATE
(founded in 1954), the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and
the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), a project of
the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), have now moved into a new phase
of professionalization -- to assess a teacher candidate’s disposition. By this I mean that
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faculty will have to determine if the teacher candidate’s internal existence aligns with
acceptable professional virtues and dispositions, which are to be adjusted if necessary.
It appears that reform agencies are attempting to follow the patterns of success
experienced by elite professions. Professions such as the medicine and law have been
able to convince society that their members possess specialized skills and knowledge that
should be valued and rewarded. To become a member an individual has had to internalize
the ideological assumptions embedded within what each profession considered legitimate
ways of knowing and behaving, historically scientific, technical and abstract (Yinger and
Hendricks-Lee 2000). This has not been a difficult feat. Those would be members
disposed toward what the professional discourse historically regards as virtues have been
compensated with economic and social status and occupational autonomy. These
rewards are wed to a virtue ethic principle: that for one’s thought and feelings to be in
harmony with professionalized ways of knowing is to truly engage in a “good life” and join
a small, elite community within the larger cultural context. However, as many critics have
pointed out, those advocating the professionalization of teaching cannot guarantee such
economic or philosophical compensation (Densmore and Burbules 1991; Labaree 1992).
Nonetheless, educational reformers in favor of intensified professionalization have
ventured into this messy territory of virtue ethics.
Whereas before NCATE held college of education faculty accountable for proving
that each pre-service teacher had mastered certain knowledge and skills, new policies
and standards now dictate that faculty must generate evidence as to whether the teacher
candidate is the right sort of person, to borrow a phrase from ethical philosopher Edmund
Pincoffs (1986). That such a push to compel teacher educators, and so teacher
candidates and eventually all K-12 teachers, to personify a particular type of thinking and
feeling to be legitimized as a teacher, obliges an interrogation beyond the mechanics of
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how to implement these requirements. There are the questions of whether dispositions, as
vaguely spelled out in the NCATE standards (2002) can be assessed at the college level,
much less taught in a way that would lead the teacher candidate to alter his or her already
settled dispositions. There simply may be too little time and access. There is also the
issue of whether dispositions toward virtues such as social justice, caring and honesty,
which NCATE documents present as desirable, will fail to leave an impression upon preservice teachers. Historically, successful professions have legitimized their social and
economic position and prestige by valuing and being disposed toward “male” oriented
(Gitlin 1996) “competitive, rationalistic, task-centered and abstracted from contexts”
approaches to work (Labaree 1992, 132).These dispositions have been reinforced in the
general process of schooling, as part of the hidden curriculum and academic achievement
discourse, according to those who analyze schooling from a critical lens (e.g. Bowers and
Flinders 1990; Doll 1998;Cherryholmes 1988; Zeichner 1991). By the time an individual
has reached college, the institutionalized dispositions within which he or she has been
inculcated, technical in nature and so assessable through standard tests and observations
of field work, have become deeply rooted habits of thought and feeling, not easily dug up
and displaced.
Aristotle’s work in virtue ethics clarifies this problem. Aristotle defined the term
disposition as the nature of a virtue or vice in relation to the agent and the possession of a
particular frame of mind in any given ethical or moral situation. He explains that a
disposition is one thread in a highly complex and pervasive ethical existence that begins
with a child being inculcated into virtuous habits as defined by a community, though with
no expectation that the child will understand the nature of the moral virtues. Not until
adulthood and only if morally and intellectually well equipped, is an individual prepared to
move beyond obeying and practicing virtue out of fear or shame of retribution to a deeper
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contemplation (theoria) of a virtue’s nature in relation to the agent him or herself. Only
then are reason and emotion harmonious and virtue acted upon out of love and
understanding rather than fear of reprisal or as an unrecognized ideological assumption
(Broadie 1991). Such a proper dispositional stance toward a virtue develops over a long
period of time and depends upon a broad range of experiences. Hence, assessing the
dispositional stance of a teacher candidate is problematic. It is also questionable to
demand a teacher candidate shed certain dispositions and virtues for which they have
been rewarded in their schooling in favor of ones that historically have not been privileged.
However, as Aristotle indicates, dialogue about and theorization (theoria) of such issues
by teacher candidates and faculty are certainly advocated and even necessary so that
each can at least begin the process of becoming critically aware of embedded
assumptions about what is virtuous or not for an individual who desires to become a
teacher.
Professional discourse as privileging “male” and technical dispositions
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 2001 Professional Standards glossary, 53)
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The term professional appears throughout NCATE and INTASC documents: “We
believe states must strive to ensure excellence in teaching for all children by establishing
professional licensing standards and learning opportunities which enable all teachers to
develop and use professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions on behalf of students”
(INTASC 1992, Preamble, emphasis mine). The pervasiveness of this discourse is
apparent in its extensive national coverage by way of NCATE, INTASC as well NBPTS.
As of this writing, 46 states and more than 600 colleges and universities have either
chosen or have been dictated to by state education departments to undergo NCATE
accreditation, with INTASC, NBPTS and NEA involved in the development of standards.
According to NCATE numbers, 28 states have aligned state standards with those of
NCATE (nate.org/ncate/m_ncate.htm), generating a condition in which the national
discussion on education reform occurs solely through the discourse of professionalism.
According to Abbot (1988, 8), the term professional refers to “exclusive occupational
groups applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases.” This has implications
for the new NCATE emphasis on dispositions and virtues.
The term dispositions appears throughout the 2001 and 2002 Professional
Standards document, always as one of a tripartite nexus from which an effective teacher
is constituted: “knowledge, skills and dispositions.” Each standard marks this phrase as
the lens through which all pre-service teachers and college of education faculty will be and
assessed. To a great extent, in this most recent NCATE treatment of dispositions, virtues
such as caring, fairness, commitment to students and a nurturing environment and
honesty contravene what have historically been considered virtues and dispositions of
professionalism – rationalized practices, disinterested application of research, abstract
context-free knowledge and technical reflection.
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In fact, NCATE dispositions and virtues appear to pull from an earlier point in
American history when normal schools prepared female elementary teachers and
universities prepared administrators. Administrators, all of whom in the early twentieth
century were male, were the first to be successfully professionalized. These men [sic]
were credentialed by schools of educations, whose faculty – also male – struggled for
academic legitimacy by creating a research model acceptable by traditional sciences and
liberal arts within the university. The university approach to professionalism depended
upon the mastery of knowledge and skills to be applied at work as determined by
research, which was occupied by certain inherent ideological assumptions about different
groups in society, such as gender differences, as well as assumptions about what
constituted legitimate knowledge (Gitlin 1996). Only those specially trained and
credentialed are able to access this abstract knowledge, which had become the
knowledge of most worth over the last few centuries due to its association with science.
However, even more significant was the belief that males had some natural capacity for
this form of rationality, and that it somehow defined the inherent male disposition. Women
were considered to neither have the capacity for nor interest in such knowledge and so
were forbidden access to it (Gitlin 1996).
Schools of education were not immune to these university conditions. Schools of
education professors, to gain legitimacy and status within the university, appropriated
knowledge approaches and dispositions associated with the male-oriented condition of
academia. In doing so, schools of education reinforced the already powerful positions of
school administrators, all of whom were male and who were disposed to approach the
institution of school as a management, bureaucratic problem in need of a top-down
solution, which research appeared to justify (Gitlin 1996; Labaree 1992; Tyack and Hansot
1982). However, the dispositions and virtues provided by NCATE as examples have
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historically been linked with gendered assumptions about how women naturally teach.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s such female oriented dispositions and virtues
comprised what normal schools, where young women attended to prepare to teach before
losing students to university schools of education, articulated as the right sort to become a
teacher. This individual was to value commitment to serving students, nurturing, childcentered and experiential learning and concern for student welfare, rather than the
mastering of a specialized form of abstract knowledge to be applied. Universities did not
value these dispositions and virtues, in part because they did not fall into professionalism
inhabited by scientific measurement and control. The acts of measuring and sorting within
the university reflected what many Anglo-protestant middle-class Americans had
embraced during the late 1800s (White 1969; Wiebe 1967; McKnight in press).
Gitlin (1996) argued that normal schools wanted to create a different form of
professionalization based upon the socially constructed female dispositions. However
normal schools had to eventually compete with schools of educations, which had evolved
into the sites where school administrators received their professional credentials through a
much different discourse. The university professional discourse further entrenched socially
constructed gender differences between teacher and administrator, as well as gave power
over the institutional sites to the administrator through the credentialing process. In other
words, the administrator was rewarded with professional autonomy long before teachers
attempted to claim such status. The professional discourse functioned to support the
bureaucratic top-down method of running schools, and also generated policies that
located control over teachers, curriculum and students within the administrator’s realm
(Burbules and Densmore 1991; Labaree 1992). An effect was the internalization of the
socially constructed male virtues and dispositions, well established within a nearly 300year old American university culture. Abstractness, context-free knowledge and tasks,
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technical reflection, task orientations, disinterested application of skills in a technical
manner, ethical behavior as clearly delineated listing of do’s and don’ts, competition,
scoring and didacticism all became the most reasonable and virtuous dispositions
(Labaree 1992). These dispositions and virtues became privileged throughout all forms of
schooling as the administrators left the university and assumed leadership roles in their
local schools. In time these dispositions became hidden and normative ways of thinking
and feeling about the function of school.
The normal school construction of professionalism failed to make an impression
upon the formal preparation of teachers once these programs were housed within schools
of education. The normal schools disappeared over time as women began to enter
universities, taking with them the possibility of developing alternative professional
dispositions and virtues aligned with the socially constructed female virtues and
dispositions. The defeat of the normal schools by universities is significant. Once teacher
preparation was located within schools of education, teacher educators experienced
pressure to appropriate the same scientific model of studying the act of teaching to
develop the sort of legitimacy that educational researchers who prepared administrators
received. The belief was that professional knowledge was scientific and hence
quantifiable and measurable, which provided proof to the population at large that the
profession possessed the skills and know-how to control outcomes. In other words, the
movement began the rationalization of the classroom (Labaree 1992). This rationalization
process has been governed by a faith that effective teaching could be neatly fit into
quantifiable categories evaluated in terms of usefulness in producing some desirable
outcome. The desired outcome for the reformers calling for further professionalization of
the field is ultimately student learning, which, in turn, is considered dependent upon the
behavior of the teacher. To follow through with this logic, a teacher’s behavior is
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dependent upon his or her disposition, his or her internal relation to the virtue at hand.
Hence, if the rationalization process is to be followed, then the disposition must somehow
be identified, measured and explained. Viewing the professionalization of teachers from
this lens was evident even in the early 1900s. Gitlin (1996, p. 600) quotes University of
Chicago Professor Charles Judd’s 1929 remarks to this end:
We measure the results of schoolwork today with a precision far beyond anything
that we hoped for two decades ago when the measurement movement was in its
infancy . . . . I hold that teacher education institutions of this country have it as their
major duty to study educational problems critically and scientifically and to make
available for the whole teaching profession the best results of such study. (Judd,
NEA Proceedings, 878-879)
An effect of this perspective of analyzing the act of teaching through the lens of
science was the ideological assumption that for a teacher to become a professional, he or
she must embody the virtues of measurement and rationalization. In the dichotomous
thinking associated with Western rationality, female dispositions would be unprofessional.
Even though teachers who possessed female dispositions could be good teachers, they
were not professionals as defined by the socio-cultural framework of the university. And
though calls for the professionalization of teaching continued, for the most part it resulted
in the expectation that a female internalize dispositions socially attached to male thinking
and feeling: “Apparently thinking of teaching’s femaleness as unprofessional, the
professionalizers seem to be trying to reshape the female schoolteacher in the image of
the male physician” (Labaree 1992, 133).
Teacher educators were to do the scholarly research that was to transform the act
of teaching into a research driven practice transmittable to all teacher candidates by
experts located within the university. NCATE’s document for professional standards
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(2001, 2002) asserts that the knowledge and skills of teaching have finally been
researched and identified: “The profession has reached a consensus about the knowledge
and skills a teacher needs to help P-12 students learn” (8). If a teacher candidate believes
in this apparent consensus, he or she will be able to “explain instructional choices based
on research-derived knowledge and best practice; apply effective methods of teaching
students . . .” (NCATE 2001, Professional Standards, 4). In fact, at one point NCATE’s
Professional Standards document states: “Candidates for all professional education roles
develop and model dispositions that are expected of educators . . . . The unit
systematically assesses the development of appropriate professional dispositions by
candidates” (2001, 19). The indication is that NCATE is solid in its association with the
professionalism’s dependence on demonstrable outcomes and performance assessment.
However, at the same time NCATE officials have acknowledged the problems of
assessing such dispositional stances created by a historical discourse of
professionalization based upon male oriented university research, which has defined the
bureaucratic power of administrative control in the institution of schooling. NCATE
Professional Standards document states: “Dispositions are not usually assessed directly;
instead they are assessed along with other performances in candidates’ work with
students, families, and communities” (NCATE 2001, 19). NCATE has taken a page from
normal schools by adding dispositions that have been associated with socially constructed
female attributes not historically fitting within the dominant framework of university-driven
professionalism (Kraft 2001; Gitlin 1992; Labaree 1992). However, the male dispositions
and academic virtues stated above have long been supported by the bureaucratic
structure of schooling and are easily assessable through tests and discrete practice
demonstrations that teacher candidates engage in. Such organization and control of
knowledge has been the policy of many successful professions. A doctor diagnosis a
Dispositions
problem correctly, applies the correct healing method as determined by research and the
patient physical state improves. That is a seemingly assessable outcome. The doctor is
simply disposed toward reliance upon the dispassionate application of abstract
knowledge. However, dispositions such as valuing social justice and diversity, being
committed to the learning of children, are much more difficult to assess in ways that are
scientific, a necessary condition of the historically dominant mode of professionalism
By the time a student arrives at college, he or she is quite familiar, even
comfortable, with the normative and expected dispositions lodged with the language of
professionalism that privileges academic achievement and technical competence, which
have become firmly entrenched virtues, though not always as consistent classroom
realities (Doll 1998; Labaree 1992; Kraft 2001). Intended or not, NCATE’s push toward
professionalism, with measurable student learning and commitment to professional
standards dictated by research practices, actually serve to perpetuate the technical
approach to university professionalism despite attempts to reconceive teacher
professionalism to include alternative virtues and dispositions (Labaree 1992; Burbules
and Densmore 1991). As Labaree writes:
However, while opposing bureaucratization, the movement promises to enhance
the rationalization of classroom instruction . . . . The teacher professionalization
movement promotes a vision of scientifically generated professional knowledge
that draws heavily on the movement’s roots in formal rationality. It portrays
teaching as having an objective empirical basis and a rational structure . . . .
Teaching would become more standardized – that is more technical proficient
according to scientifically established criteria for accepted professional practices
(1992, 147).
11
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This creates a quandary for NCATE. Along with its partners in reform, NCATE
calls for pre-service teachers and teacher educators to embody two different sets of
values and dispositions that in teacher preparation have been mutually exclusive. NCATE
documents (2001a, 2001b, 2002) indicate that students must disassemble the deeply
embedded rationalized, male dispositions that have controlled the institution of schooling
for a century through the professional practices of administrators and replace them with
dispositions that were apparently privileged by normal schools more than a century ago.
These dispositions are regarded by university, research-driven professionalism as not
integral to the application of knowledge and skills (Kraft 2001). Why the so called female
dispositions will not make inroads into the university training of teachers, as long as the
research driven professionalism maintains its power in the university, becomes even more
evident once one explores how Aristotle handled dispositions in his virtue ethic.
The place of dispositions in virtue ethics
When Aristotle pondered the problem of ethics, the arc of his thought was given
structural support by the language of vices and virtues, the often subtle, complicated and
culturally contextualized ideals that he believed an individual must possess to achieve
happiness (eudaimonia: also translated as human flourishing). Pincoffs (1986) explains
Aristotle’s concerns: “[T]he leading question concerns the best kind of individual life and
the qualities of character exhibited by the man [sic] who leads it. Again, a necessary
preliminary is the study of types of men, of characters, as possible exemplars of the sort
of life to be pursued or avoided” (16).
According to Aristotle, what form a vice or virtue takes is not static but instead
historically situated within a particular community (koinonia: common bond that holds a
group together; also translated as association of common interests). Each given
community determines the preferences of those living within the social network of that
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time and place. From his historical situation, Aristotle addresses the issue of which human
qualities should be preferred and which should be grounds for avoidance by individuals
who share communal ties and obligations. His arche is that humans are inherently social
creatures whose ultimate goal should be to achieve arête (often translated as excellence
in terms of performing one’s function in life well) and the good life through interaction with
those who share some sort of communal ties. Important is not just the possession of
virtues to get along with others, but to get along in a way that sustains civic friendship
(philia). As Aristotle states, one of the main goals of moral wisdom is to preserve
communal life as just and productive (NE, Bk. 1, 7, 1097b: Ostwald translation).
By this Aristotle is not saying that only external relations are significant. To truly
work, which for Aristotle means to sustain the possibility of justice and human happiness,
the internal must be in harmony with action in the world. As such, dispositions within the
discourse of virtue ethics involve not just an externalities regulated by ethical codes, but
individual internal states or desires in relation to some particular virtue or vice that will
effect the material world.
Aristotelian scholar Sarah Broadie (1991) provides a glimpse into how Aristotle
constructed dispositions: “A virtuous person is one who is such as to, who is disposed to,
act well when occasional arises. And so far as ‘acting well’ implies not merely causing
certain changes in the world, but doing so in the right frame of mind or with right motive, a
disposition to act well is also a disposition to act in the right frame of mind” (58). A
disposition by definition is connected to some specific emotion or desire toward a virtuous
or vicious end. From this simple description, one cannot necessarily argue against teacher
education reformers impulse to identify desirable dispositions, for that desire is, obviously,
quite ancient.
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It is not unfair to say, then, that dispositions, of which teacher education reformers
speak, specifically in terms of the emotional condition of human existence (affect), seem
to represent in the discourse of virtue ethics an important step toward the attainment of
particular virtues. However, not all affective components (emotional or desirous) are
dispositional. For instance, if I get upset with my child for knocking over the orange juice
when generally I would not, then the emotion and frame of mind is not connected to any
disposition. A dispositional state has to be re-occurring. Also, a recurrent emotional
reaction or desire to produce a goal that is not also coupled with a habit of acting in a
specific way from those emotions or desires is also not a dispositional emotion or desire. If
I desire that academic freedom is absolute when it comes to what I do within and how I go
about handling my college course, but then allow others in administration, state agencies,
students or colleagues to decide such issues, then I do not possess a proper dispositional
desire. Or, if I desire for teacher candidates (who not long ago were simply called
students, then became pre-service teachers) to become advocates and practitioners of
social justice, but then turn around and advise them to not follow through with such beliefs
as they may cause upheaval in the school or loss of job due to the institution’s
unwillingness to change, then I do not possess a proper dispositional desire.
Hence, while possessing a certain desire is necessary, it is not sufficient to
produce a disposition. The desire must be connected to a particular goal, a virtue, and
must reoccur in each situation as the context changes, which in everyday life it does quite
rapidly from one community to the next. Aristotle writes: “Virtue then is a settled
disposition of the mind determining choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially
in the observance of the mean relatives to us. This being determined by principle, that is,
as the prudent man would determine it (NE, Bk. 2, 6, 15: Rackham translation). When
Aristotle uses the phrase “settled disposition,” he is referring to the moment when a
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disposition connects to particular habits, a patterned way of acting and reacting to various
circumstances. Such a definition seems to indicate that a disposition then is the same as
a habit. Aristotle makes a distinction here:
Habit differs from disposition in being more lasting and more firmly
established. The various kinds of knowledge and of virtue are habits, for
knowledge, even when acquired only in a moderate degree, is, it is
agreed, abiding in its character and difficult to displace . . . . By a
disposition, on the other hand, we mean a condition that is easily
changed and quickly gives place to its opposite . . . . Habits are at the
same time dispositions, but dispositions are not necessarily habits.
(Works, Organaon, Categories, 8, 8b27-30, 35-36, 9a10-11)
One could be disposed toward irritability, but if the context and environment
changes that disposition could shift to its opposite, cheerfulness. Simply, a disposition is
not a guarantee that a virtuous outcome will occur. A virtue is a live action and begins
with a disposition, which in itself can only bring out the conditions appropriate for a
virtuous outcome to occur. A virtue requires the sum total of having the right desire and
the right reasoning in order to make the right choice that will bring about virtuous
conditions and possibly even outcomes: “Since choice is a deliberate desire, it follows
that, if the choice is to be good, the reasoning must be true and the desire correct . . . . [I]n
intellectual activity concerned with action, the good state is truth in harmony with correct
desire" (NE, Bk. 6, 1139a, 2, 24-27: Ostwald translation). However, to engage in this
virtuous activity requires very specific kinds of habits; ones that operate from what
Aristotle called the doctrine of the mean, which involves three dispositions -- the correct
one situated between two extremes.
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For instance, to have a courageous disposition is to repeatedly be able to confront
danger with emotional rectitude (controlled fear) and with a reasonable aim of producing
or protecting some good (e.g. others lives). To have a foolish disposition is to repeatedly
confront danger (without any fear) and without a reasonable aim of producing or
protecting some good (e.g. to die for nothing). These specific kinds of habits are related to
dispositions in that the individual had a inclination or desire to be courageous, but it took
the development of these very specific habits to make sure that the condition of courage
translated into virtuous action rather than falling over into a vice, such as foolishness. One
who is merely disposed toward courage may, in the end, engage in an act that results in a
vicious outcome. Beyond choosing courage as a virtue to which one should be disposed,
specific kinds of habits that link to such a virtue must be attached that reflect what
Aristotle called the mean, which is supposed to protect against well-intentioned
dispositions that fail to arrive at the chosen virtue. However, these habits are not merely
instrumental acts or strategies that teacher research has determined lead to a particular
outcome within an individual or between individuals.
Twentieth Century ethicists spent a great deal of time attempting to do just that
and failed (Bauman 1984). As discussed above, and which NCATE documents appear to
recognize, one must engage in a virtuous activity from a dispositional frame of mind that
truly accepts and believes that his or her disposition will create the conditions by which
virtue can emerge and flourish. In effect, both Aristotle, as a representative virtue ethic,
and teacher education reformers seem to desire positive effects, though each define them
differently. For Aristotle, the positive effect is the attainment of virtue and possibility of
human flourishing and communal friendship, though none of this is guaranteed. One can
only help the conditions favorable for the virtue to emerge, but not secure this outcome
with certainty, unlike the desire upon which NCATE’s professional discourse operates. For
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the professional discourse, certainty of outcomes is the whole point. And this situation is
problematic when understood from Aristotle’s virtue ethic, which does not operate in such
a strategic and narrow manner.
In effect, as mentioned above, specific habits must be developed within the
individual for a disposition to develop into a virtue, habits which, according to any basic
virtue ethic, begin early in an individual’s life and encompasses the whole of the
individual’s being in every act and thought rather than in particular external activities or
jobs. A disposition is not a strategic instrument one uses here or there and then puts down
when finished. A person's dispositions or patterns of action can be virtuous or vicious and
are not attached to any particular position in life. In other words, a virtue is a virtue for all
and not just for a law professor, an educator or an education professor or pre-service
teacher (Pincoffs 1986). As Pincoffs points out, if each work situation developed a list of
specific dispositions and virtues appropriate only for that particular job, this would be a
bizarre condition indeed. One would be left with an arbitrary listing and enumeration for
each role he or she played in life.
That one’s whole existence cannot be morally and ethically compartmentalized,
and that dispositions must connect to virtuous habits early in an individual’s life, is
significant for NCATE’s emphasis upon transmitting and assessing dispositions at the
college level. For dispositions are not items to check off as tasks completed and graded
by some kind of rubric or determined by a code of ethics unless they are defined in terms
of the historical male oriented dispositions as discussed above. Nor are dispositions, once
settled over time into virtuous activity, easily adjustable as many current teacher
educational reformers seem to believe and advocate, as indicated in the above discussion
on the self-surveillance of the reflective practitioner seeking to adjust his or her thoughts
and actions to what works best for students to learn. Which brings us to issues that loom
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over any desire to implement dispositions at the college level: time, teaching and the lack
of understanding as to what virtues, moral or intellectual, do teacher education reformers
really desire.
Of time and teaching dispositions
For Aristotle, virtues are broken down into two types: intellectual and moral. The
intellectual virtues, such as “theoretical wisdom, understanding and practical wisdom . . .
owes its origin and development chiefly to teaching, and for that reason requires
experience and time” (NE, Bk.1, 1103a, 6-7; Bk. 2, 1103a, 16-17). These are the virtues to
which Aristotle pointed to when speaking to his students. On the other hand, the moral
virtues, such as self-control and generosity, are formed through habit beginning at a very
early age.
The moral virtues are dispositions such that no set of examples or reasons given
could ever determinately define the virtues, which for Aristotle defined the act of teaching.
They may provide prototypical examples for some general types of circumstances, but
most situations are actually different from each other in such ways that seeing how the
circumstances matter in each case is of more practical importance than knowing the
general examples of virtue.
Thus, it is over the long term of life experience and through continuous reflection
on the specifics of one’s practical experiences that one may develop a disposition in a
way that connects to a practical/moral virtue. One might be aided by examples early on,
but to know about such examples will not come close to producing the dispositions to act
the right way through all the different circumstances we face. Since moral wisdom has no
clear first principles and reason giving is not necessary, Aristotle argues that it cannot be
taught. Moral wisdom must be acquired through acting and evaluating the results of our
actions in every single circumstance of our lives and over a lifetime (Of course this
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Aristotelian notion can also be criticized as a kind of self-surveillance of which Foucault
[1991] critiqued, though Aristotle seeks to follow the virtue ethic desire for wisdom, which
is often uncertain and frail, while the discourse of professionalism is based upon a desire
for certainty, efficiency and measurability).
These dispositions are developed early and are difficult to excise and replace with
others. They are part of the inculcation process rather than the teaching process that
takes place in later years. Simply, a disposition cannot be taught in a manner that can be
measured as successful or not. I quote at length Aristotle’s explanation of this condition:
Now if discourses on ethics were sufficient in themselves to make men
virtuous, ‘large fees and many’ . . . ‘would they win’, quite rightly, and to
provide such discourses would be all that is wanted. But as it is, we see
that although theories have power to stimulate and encourage generous
youths, and, given an inborn nobility of character and a genuine love of
what is noble, can make them susceptible to the influence of virtue, yet they
are powerless to stimulate the mass of mankind to moral nobility. For it is
the nature of the many to be amenable to fear but not to a sense of honour,
and to abstain from evil not because of its baseness but because of the
penalties it entails; since, living as they do by passion, they pursue the
pleasures akin to their nature, and the things that will procure those
pleasures, and avoid the opposite pains, but have not even a notion of
what is noble and truly pleasant, having never tasted true pleasure.
What theory then can reform the natures of mean like these? To dislodge
by argument habits long firmly rooted in their characters is difficult if not
impossible. We may doubtless think ourselves fortunate if we attain some
measure of virtue when all the things believed to make men virtuous are
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20
ours . . . . Again, theory and teaching are not, I fear, equally efficacious in
all cases: the soil must have been previously tilled if it is to foster the seed,
the mind of the pupil must have been prepared by the cultivation of habits,
so as to like and dislike aright. For he that lives at the dictates of passion
will not hear nor understand the reasoning of one who tries to dissuade
him; but if so, how can you change his mind by argument? (NE, Bk. 10, 6-7:
Rackham translation).
Aristotle’s words are directed to students he assumes have already acquired a
taste for virtues, who already are beyond the early dispositions of inculcation, and who
have settled into good habits. Aristotle’s students are prepared to deepen and
contemplate the intellectual virtues in relation to the moral virtues. Each type of virtue is
dispositional, with the intellectual in line with philosophical deliberation, which is also a
practice (Burnyeat 1980). Aristotle’s students, akin to college students of the modern era,
have already been inculcated into particular dispositions and character traits, ones that
suit the life of an intellectual. Only those who have been fully prepared through childhood
inculcation, according to any generalizable virtue ethic, are prepared to deliberate upon
virtues and possibly revise actions based upon what Aristotle called the proper
combination of reason and desire. If a student comes with what Aristotle deems
dispositions that are based upon fear and passions (those aspects of human nature upon
which codes of ethics regulates) rather than love of virtue, then no amount of argument or
demonstration will have an affect.
To put this idea another way: Some dispositions that are determinate can be easily
demonstrated and so observable and testable in a short period of time, if you will; such as
the disposition to blush when a profanity is uttered. Another dispositional example would
be a teacher reacting with rage when a student becomes disrespectful. Simple codes of
Dispositions
21
ethics (e.g. one does not verbally or physically abuse a student) are able to explain and
control this circumstance. This kind of disposition can be demonstrated or taught, which
according to Aristotle, is the business of demonstrating or giving reasons and
explanations. One can easily and quickly identify the change in color of an individual’s
face when he or she hears the joke or when he or she feels anger swelling up inside due
to a student’s behavior. The terms become descriptive. However, how does one
demonstrate the virtue and, so, dispositions of justice, or even social justice, another
complicated term that has entered into mainstream vocabulary and has taken on some
fascinating material conditions? A child could sit in a country or state criminal courtroom
all day long, but did he or she learn anything about justice? The child observes specific
instances upon which the possibility of drawing an inference may one day coalesce with
many other experiences and translate into an understanding of justice, but nothing of the
particular event can be explained as justice. Most likely, the child learned more about how
handcuffs and chains work and the color differences that exist between lawyers, judge
and alleged criminal.
Or, how can one demonstrate charitableness? Pincoffs (1986) provides this
example to illustrate the difficulty, even impossibility, of such direct instruction. I can stand
before students and give them a definition, show them a film and test them on whether
they can rehearse the abstract theories of charity transmitted to them. I can even take
them outside to a homeless shelter and pick a homeless person to give money to. Or to
employ the hands on approach, have each student go and donate money. However, is
that charity? Does one watching such activity learn what charity is? According to
Aristotle’s logic, an individual cannot learn such dispositions, which tend to be the ones
society values the most. One has to literally embody them by performing a charitable act
over and over again throughout life, coming, in adulthood, to understand this virtue to the
Dispositions
22
point that he or she is truly disposed toward acting virtuously out of the love of the virtue
itself.
Again, habit is a key term because often dispositions are equated with habits of
action, which is not actually accurate (Pincoffs 1986). An individual may over time be
taught the technical habit of opening a door for another individual, but this in itself is not a
disposition. In other words, the act of opening doors for others is not a quality that one
would necessarily say is a requirement for being the right sort of individual for this or that
position. It only indicates what one did in this or that particular circumstance. Nothing is
said about the overall character of that individual. The act of a man opening the door for a
woman or vice versa could be viewed as little more than the beginning act of seduction or
an ingrained social etiquette that has lost its cultural purpose and meaning. However, as
Pincoffs (1986) points out, to say that someone is polite is to go well beyond the particular
circumstance of opening the door and to the overall quality of the individual. The one act
may bring the observation from another that the person was polite. But it cannot in good
faith bring on the observation that the person, therefore, must be a polite person overall.
The same goes for calling one professional.
To decide that politeness is the right sort of disposition for an individual who is
becoming a teacher to possess is one thing, but then to decide one specific strategy by
which to teach the individual how to be that disposition is quite another. Whereas in one
sense dispositions can be brought up to students as abstract principles to be thought
about while experiencing ethical situations, the problem lies in the desire to assess
whether students have “learned” or embodied the meanings of those dispositions in a way
that they act upon them in life. This would lead to direct moral training and enforcement,
despite the understanding that dispositions are not learned in such a direct fashion.
Dispositions
23
Conclusion: The study of, but not assessment of
To engage in the study, rather than the transmission, of dispositions, as operating
from Aristotle’s notion of intellectual excellence and practical reasoning, occurs with those
who have passed through a good portion of life and have experiences from which to draw
when discussing the possible meanings, values and complexities of such dispositions. In
the context of virtue ethics, the best one can do at the college level is to address and
theorize (theoria) the intellectual and moral dispositions. If students are receptive,
meaning if they come equipped with certain dispositional desires and habits that support
receptivity, reason giving and deliberation in an effort to harmonize reason and desire can
come about over a long period of time.
However, by the time college students are designated teacher candidates,
transmission and assessment of dispositions are misguided and too late, unless one takes
the position that college students are still children, and that colleges of education will have
access to them for more than two to four years; or, that the dispositions NCATE officials
actually seek are the traditional professionalized ones, which are already firmly
entrenched by years of schooling. Or, one could take the position that all teacher
candidates must spend two years in the field, under probationary status, in which they are
observed and dialogued with on a daily basis, in and out of school. Then at the end of two
years – an arbitrary number -- it is judged whether the teacher candidate has settled into
the dispositions deemed appropriate for one who teaches. Within the current context of
teacher education and the overall political environment, that is a highly doubtful scenario.
This is not to assert that teacher education faculty should disregard the notion of
dispositions just because the dispositions and virtues that NCATE states are valuable,
such as caring, responsibility and social justice, cannot be assessed according to the
criteria framed within the historical context of professionalization. The problem is in the
Dispositions
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attempt to assess a pre-service teacher’s disposition in action, so to speak. To attempt to
make such an assessment creates the scenario in which an observer would be forced to
accept the notion that the virtues and dispositions have universal characteristics that can
be identified in any given situation and hence can be framed within some sort of rubric
(the catch-word for assessment minded educational reformers), to be checked off. This is
to believe that dispositions and virtues such as responsibility and fairness can be defined
and refined to control every contingency in a schoolroom. There is nothing effective
teacher research can do to prove that a particular act of fairness, or the occasional
necessity for unfairness, will correlate with an act of learning.
However, as a professor, I can certainly judge if a pre-service teacher is aware of
what dispositions are, how they operate in virtue ethics and how they might play out in
individual’s actions in the world. I can judge this awareness through dialogue, by having
them read research, perform research, write and present on virtue ethic issues. Such and
intellectual engagement could possibly result in a pre-service teacher participating in
theoria. The hope – not a term of measurement and assessment, but one that certainly is
more accurate to what actually occurs – is that the pre-service teacher eventually chooses
to possess the desire to operate out of praxis, a kind of thoughtful action that emerges
from years of study and experience.
Over time, and dependent upon a lifelong interest in such philosophical issues, an
individual may possibly come to ethical conclusions to alter his or her dispositions
because of a love for particular virtues and act in accordance with them. If I visit that preservice teacher many years down the road and spend a good deal of time with him or her,
I might be able to make such a judgment as to whether this internalization has taken place
and if the individual is still concerned and thinking about such matters. But I cannot judge
Dispositions
25
whether pre-service teachers have internalized particular dispositions, at least if one
follows the logic set forth in Aristotle’s version of virtue ethics.
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