Pre-service Teachers' Dispositions towards Diversity: Arguing for A Developmental Hierarchy of Change

This article was published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol. 26, Issue 3, Author(s): Carmen Mills and Julie Ballantyne, “Pre-service Teachers' Dispositions towards Diversity: Arguing for A Developmental Hierarchy of Change“, Pages 447-454, Copyright Elsevier (April 2010).

This paper explores Australian pre-service teachers' beliefs about and attitudes towards diversity.

The authors rely on Garmon's argument that there are three dispositional factors that influence students' likelihood of developing multicultural awareness and sensitivity in teacher education programmes. Hence, the authors examine the relationship between such dispositions as exhibited in students' autoethnographic work. In so doing, the authors posit that these dispositions may be hierarchically developed: beginning from ‘self-awareness/self-reflectiveness’; moving towards ‘openness’; and finally a ‘commitment to social justice’.

The authors explore the nature of this hierarchical development through the in-depth investigation of six representative student accounts.

Finally, the authors discuss the implications for teacher education, including the necessity to adjust our expectations of changing the dispositions of pre-service teachers in discrete, short courses.

Reference
Garmon, M. A. (2004). Changing preservice teachers' attitudes/beliefs about diversity: what are the critical factors? Journal of Teacher Education, 55(3), 201–213.