Developing Professional Dispositional Resilience among Teacher Candidates: Reframing Chaotic Experience as Resource for Teacher Learning
Dr. Pauli Badenhorst
Assistant Professor of Teacher Education
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
The development of professional teacher dispositions (Diez & Raths, 2007; Knoepen & Davidson-Jenkins, 2007; InTASC, 2013; Lee Smith & Skarbek, 2013; NCATE, 2013) remains a primary, essential task of teacher education. Professional teacherly dispositions, or “tendencies for individuals to act in a particular manner under particular circumstances, based on their beliefs” (Villegas, 2007, p. 373), are indispensable towards, among others, sustainable pedagogical practice (Burden & Byrd, 2019, pp. 3-4) and attendance to issues of social justice in the classroom (Villegas, 2007). One of these professional dispositions, resilience, or the capacity to face, overcome, and even be strengthened by experiences of adversity” (Tait, 2008, p. 58), is inextricably related to personal efficacy and emotional intelligence (Tait, 2008, p. 61), and is exemplified through critical professional traits such as social competence, problem solving, the ability to rebound from difficulty, learning from experience, self-care, and optimism (pp. 69-70). Consequently, learning resilience in pre-service teacher education contexts is ultimately essential towards novice teacher success, commitment, and retention (Tait, 2008) amidst the “unforgiving complexity of teaching” (Cochran-Smith, 2003, p. 3).
In this brief reflection, the experiences of a teacher educator and sixteen teacher candidates participating in a pilot structured field experience between The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and Juarez-Lincoln High School in Mission, Texas, are explored. While the bilingual, bicultural borderland (Cline & Necochea, 2006) of the Rio Grande Valley presents a unique, vibrant context in which to think about teacher education and learning to teach, the importance of professional dispositions for teacher learners is of broad concern. In particular, chaotic experiences arising within the day-to-day context of participation in a research-supported structured field experience are here framed as valuable opportunities for teacher candidates’ in situ learning of resilience as a vital professional disposition for future teaching. In other words, such chaos, when mobilized, is a valuable resource for learning resilience. While field experiences may be structured, unforeseen situations arising from the messiness of everyday life means that there is always chaos interspersing the structure. To this end, I tender the metaphor of bamboo (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) to illustrate the primary difference between the necessary planned, structured and unplanned, chaotic elements of field-based teacher education experiences.
Bamboo is a rhizome. A rhizome is a root system characterized by invisible subterraneous complexity that gives rise to interconnected though seemingly separate sprouts above the surface. Bamboo sprouts appear as independent, structured entities above the soil surface even though they share a common, complex root system beneath the surface. Teacher education in field-based contexts is akin to bamboo in at least two ways. First, the means through which we evaluate and measure teacher candidates’ mastery of professional learning often – like bamboo sprouts above the surface – takes on the tidy evidence-based appearance of structure and organization. Here, as example, teacher candidates demonstrate their pedagogical competence by completing highly structured key assessments. These include assessment and instructional planning, as well as data literacy assignments that require teacher candidates to rely on contextual data while lesson planning so as to identify concrete accommodations for learners with exceptionalities and English language learners. However, there is a second characteristic of the professional learning of teacher candidates that, like the intertwined root system of bamboo below the surface, is characteristically less visible and more complex, namely, the learning of professional teacher dispositions. Such learning is difficult to structure since it occurs most optimally in direct context to spontaneous everyday situations and demanding professional and interactional encounters, and is illustrated by the following two examples.
Ronaldo, a young Latino teacher candidate who is reliant on his field mentor teacher for a substantial amount of information necessary to complete several teacher education course assignments directly related to the structured field experience, struggles to collect said information. He is moved from one mentor teacher to another on a weekly basis – a situation arising from scheduling conflicts within the high school. Ronaldo words this experience as follows:
One experience that stands out for me would be not knowing what teacher and classroom I would be in from week to week. Due to admin constantly pulling out my mentor teacher, I was usually with one of three teachers, varying depending on time of day and if the teachers were absent or not. This helped me become more flexible as it was something I was worried about in the school setting as I am one who loves structure / order, but due to this I have grown to love being flexible in the school setting.
Teresa, a young Latina teacher candidate, and her partner prepare a detailed lesson plan for their (co-)teaching demonstration only to be told by their mentor teacher after having already commenced the lesson that they now have a third less instructional time than was originally planned. Teresa reports:
While teaching our lesson we were told that we only had 30 minutes instead of 45 minutes. We had to rearrange the whole lesson to accommodate for the new time frame.
In fact, numerous teacher candidate reflections of our pilot structured field experience – much like the brief narratives above – highlight examples of chaos flooding programmatic attempts at implementing structure. Among others, teacher candidates commonly report experiences of mentor teachers not being informed about their mentoring responsibilities; mentor teachers being too tightly constrained for time to communicate around interrelated course/field key assessments that teacher candidates are expected to complete in regular consultation with their mentors, as well as insufficient opportunity to directly interact with students or provide program-mandated exploratory direct instruction under the auspices of their mentor teachers.
Since such encounters are chaotic in that these are characterized by disorder relative to the stated aims of the experience, and are often difficult to immediately address and change due to the involvement of multiple role-players in the structured field experience, they require reconsideration of the value of situational learning for developing professional teacher dispositions. Additionally, such experiences also require the reflexive means necessary to make sense of and reinforce context-based learning amidst the chaos of everyday life. Furthermore, due to their psycho-affective nature, the learning of teacherly dispositions requires the personal adoption and application of key professional and relational values and beliefs that inevitably change aspects of the character of teacher candidates. This means that rather than sheltering teacher candidates from unpleasant emotions like anxiety, teacher educators need to encourage and even model engagement with such emotions as a valuable constituent towards the integration of resilience as vital teacherly disposition.
Teaching will always be complex (Davis & Sumara, 2006) – a reality stemming from the chaos principle, namely that disorder and unpredictability pervade not only the Cosmos but all of life (Bey, 2003). Consequently, linear predictability and certain outcome in curricular and instructional contexts are tenuous at best (Doll, 1993). Rather, chaos and its ensuing complexities are productive of new modes of becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1997), as well as pedagogical and curricular innovation (Bernard & Slattery, 1992; Doll, 2012). As pointed out by Doll (1993), “chaos is not a wild, random abandon. Far from it; the pattern is quite orderly but complex . . . random, but it is a pattern” (p. 93) – a process that Doll refers to elsewhere as “unpredictable determinism” (p. 17). Such observation is of particular relevance to the contemporary context of teaching and learning where teacher accountability predicated on standardized assessments is often foregrounded. Recognition of the inevitable, omnipresent influence of chaos in processes of teaching and learning does not circumvent teacher responsibility, but instead enables a more complex, nuanced grappling with accountability that underscores the need for teacher preparation programs and experiences to foster professional teacherly dispositions characterized by heightened resilience, resourcefulness, and relationality.
Chaotic situations and contexts arising within pre-service educator preparation experiences – such as field-based experiences – can be strategically utilized towards the development of greater dispositional resilience among teacher candidates. While I am still thinking through how to further develop my teacher educator engagement with and framing of chaos as valuable resource towards the development of resilience as teacherly disposition, I offer three rudimentary strategies for how experiences of chaos and complexity can be integrated as a vital component of teacher preparation contexts:
- Teacher candidates participating in field-based experiences should be encouraged to keep a reflective journal of challenging experiences encountered in the field, including reflecting on their accompanying emotions. Such journaling can be incorporated into the teacher education class where teacher candidates think through, develop, and discuss proactive problem-solving actions.
- Teacher educators should avoid the temptation to coddle teacher candidates during field-based experiences characterized by uncomfortable emotions like anxiety and frustration. Instead, teacher educators would do well to offer encouragement and guidance, where appropriate, while explicitly framing the uncomfortable situation as a valuable opportunity for the teacher candidate to assume greater responsibility and experiment with a range of alternative attitudes and practices.
- On a philosophical level, teacher education curricula need to purposefully frame the messy, uncertain, unplanned aspects of teaching and learning, as well as human interaction in general, as an inevitable characteristic of life rather than as a failure or error of sorts. After all, success in any form is not a given; success is usually the product of multiple failures, perseverant reengagement, focus and effort.
Such strategies may go some way towards enabling teacher educators and teacher candidates to reflexively analyze and engage complex social and pedagogical interactions within structure field contexts. Here, in particular, teacher candidates as researchers of their localized contexts and practices are better enabled to learn dispositional resilience as a flexible and changeable attitude in the very encounter with social and pedagogical complexity since the work of trying to understand things should be accompanied by the recognition that “we are part of the things we are trying to understand” (Davis & Sumara, 2006, p. 16). Such approach stresses learning to teach as a highly personal experience in which uncertainty and even error are accorded profound pedagogical value and potency (Britzman, 2003).
References
Bernard, H., & Slattery, P. (1992). Quantum Curriculum. Paper presented at JCT Bergamo Conference, Dayton, Ohio.
Bey, H. (2003). TAZ: The temporary autonomous zone – Ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism. New York: Autonomedia.
Britzman, D. (2003). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany: State University of New York.
Burden, P.R., & Byrd, D.M. (2019). Methods for effective teaching: Meeting the needs of all students. New York: Pearson.
Cline, Z., & Necochea, J. (2006). Teacher dispositions for effective education in the borderlands. The Educational Forum, 70 (Spring), 268-281.
Cochran-Smith, M. (2003). The unforgiving complexity of teaching: Avoiding simplicity in the age of accountability. Journal of Teacher Education, 54(1), 3-5.
Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (2006). Complexity and education: Inquiries into learning, teaching, and research. New York: Routledge.
Deleuze, Gilles., & Guattari, Félix. (1987). A thousand plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Diez, M.E., & Raths, J. (2007). Dispositions in teacher education. Charlotte: Information Age.
Doll, W. (1993). A post-modern perspective on curriculum. New York: Teachers College.
Doll, W. (2012). Complexity and the culture of curriculum. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 9(1), 10-29.
InTASC. (2013). InTASC: Model core teaching standards and learning progressions for teachers 1.0. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers.
Knoepen, K.E., & Davison Jenkins, J. (2007). Teacher dispositions: Envisioning their role in education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lee Smith, R., & Skarbek, D. (2013). Professional teacher dispositions: Additions to the mainstream. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
NCATE. (2013). Professional standards for the accreditation of teacher preparation institutions. Washington, DC: National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.
Tait, M. (2008). Resilience as a contributor to novice teacher success, commitment, and retention. 35(4), 57-75.
Villegas, A.M. (2007). Dispositions in teacher education: A look at social justice. Journal of teacher education, 58(5), 370-380.