Parents want their children to have good a teacher. Parents want their children to go to a good school. The question remains, “What is meant by good and how do we get there?” Good schools benefit not only individual children and their families but also our society as a whole. So, we all search for quality education. In the United States, this search is not new. We have had a Nation at Risk, the No Child Left Behind Act, Race to the Top and the Every Student Succeeds Act, all mandated in the name of quality education, but how do we measure education, and more specifically teacher quality? We look to standards for that answer.

Efforts are aimed at helping students to achieve at high levels of success. The determination of school effectiveness has rested soundly on standardized achievement test scores comparing child to child, school to school, district to district, state to state, and nation to nation. We award letter grades to indicate school quality, based on these tests. We know that the impact of a teacher on student learning is significant (Tucker & Stronge, 2005) and that the quality of the preparation of that teacher matters significantly when it comes to teacher effectiveness (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Thus, teacher preparation programs build on and respond to accreditation standards that provide descriptions of expectations for teachers’ practices and professionalism, and states employ standards for teaching practices and licensure.

We search for quality teachers. By most definitions, a highly qualified teacher possesses content area knowledge, typically measured by counting content course hours taken in college and continuing education units accumulated through professional development such as workshops or conferences. Teacher effectiveness and quality have been linked to increased student test scores and value added measures; however, the concept of teacher quality is not so easily quantified. The limitations of these approaches to teacher quality and effectiveness are evident, but they yield desired data and numbers to “objectively “rank and reward teachers.

But there is something more to being a great teacher. Content understanding and teaching skills are necessary to teacher quality, but are they sufficient? Beyond the numbers, a closer examination of teaching and learning within our schools may reveal seemingly less tangible, yet significant factors that affect and indicate the quality of student learning that numbers cannot capture. Specifically, who a teacher is and what a teacher does in the classroom directly affects not only the daily lives of students but also their future lives as educated, democratic, 21st-century adults.

This book explores this somewhat less tangible teacher quality indicator called teacher dispositions. Dispositions have been part of teaching standards for several decades. Further, disposition evaluation tools are used throughout teacher preparation programs across the nation. The acknowledgment of the importance of who the teacher is as a person, beyond possessing needed knowledge and skill sets, is clear. Perhaps what is less clear is “What does that mean?” This book poses and discusses multiple questions related to teacher quality and teacher dispositions. The first section seeks to build a foundational understanding of the concept of dispositions and offers a construct, namely Dispositions in Action, to examine how teacher dispositions affect student learning. The second section is comprised of teachers’ stories explaining and exemplifying Dispositions in Action in their real classrooms. Lastly, tools and approaches to evaluate Dispositions in Action are included, as well as suggestions for how they may be helpful to teachers, administrators, and everyday people to better understand and think about what we mean by and how we acquire quality teachers in our classrooms.

We have all had, or at least deserved to have a great teacher. These are the teachers who influence us as people, both as students in their classrooms and the adults we become. What is it that makes some teachers so good? What do they have that other teachers, even those who are smart and skilled at teaching, do not have? They have the It factor, the dispositions that set these teachers apart from others. This book asks, “What are teacher dispositions?” It examines what teacher dispositions look like in the classroom, in action. It explains why teachers with certain dispositions work better with students as learners. It also explores why dispositions matter, especially now.

A teacher’s dispositions directly affect the kind of learning that takes place with students. Dispositions establish the framework and foundation for relationships within the classroom. They reveal how aspects of teaching and learning come to life. Dispositions affect the development of students as thinkers, collaborators, creators and decision-makers. Who a teacher is, how she or he is disposed to view, interpret, and determine what happens in the classroom, directly impacts students, and thus perhaps our future. This book allows us to think about, talk about, and use a definition of teacher dispositions that matters to student learning and the development of future leaders.