Assessing Dispositions towards Teaching Students of Diversity

There has been an increasing challenge to teacher education programs to better prepare teacher candidates to work with students of diverse backgrounds. Teachers must possess a disposition which will provide all students with the best education possible, because they will have a direct impact on so many children throughout their career. Teacher education programs, therefore, have an ethical responsibility to admit candidates into the program that have the disposition necessary to have a positive impact on students during their teaching careers. The purpose of this study was to describe Oklahoma CareerTech teachers self-assessed dispositions towards issues of diversity (i.e., assumptions about race, ethnicity, culture, gender, social class, sexual orientation, religion, language, and exceptionality) associated with the teaching and learning process and to identify naturally-occurring clusters within this population.