Dispositional tuning is a practice in which we engage in order to be “in tune” with ourselves and others. The Teacher Education programs at SFU are premised upon four guiding dispositions that speak directly to this particular type of attunement: pedagogical sensitivity; other-directedness; reflective capacity; and, critical mindedness.

1. Dispositional Tuning:
Reflecting the Change
Presented by: Dr. Vandy Britton (Program Coordinator) &
Jonathan Vervaet (Faculty Associate)
WestCAST 2014 – February 20th, 2014

4. What characteristics of
mind / thought are most
valuable in effective
teachers?

5. Four Guiding Dipositions
of Professional Programs
at Simon Fraser University
(Smith, 2004)

6. Pedagogical Sensitivity – understanding
the primacy of the adult/child
relationship, its ethical
underpinnings, and its institutional
forms.

7. Other Directedness –
understanding the community basis to
learning, the service orientation to
teaching, and the requisite openness
to diversity, difference, or otherness in
education.

8. Reflective Capacity –
understanding the ways and means of
grasping the significance of teaching
situations and events.

9. Critical Mindedness –
understanding the problematic nature
of teaching practice.

10. Pedagogical Sensitivity
Other Directedness
Reflective Capacity
Critical Mindedness

11. Student Teacher Admissions
&
Hiring Faculty Associates

12. Multiple Perspectives:
A Reflection on
Experiences in the
Professional
Development Program

13. Interwoven Experiences
Student Teachers &
Faculty Associates

14. Personal Reflection
and Reflexivity

15. Learning
about, learning with,
learning from.

16. Cognitive Dissonance:
Disrupting the Integrity
of Taken for Granted
Assumptions.

17. The Ripple Effect of
Helping New Teachers
Become Proficient in the
Dispositions

18. …in terms of the orientation of the
PDP, "[r]eflection is seen as
central...being viewed not as a
generic disposition but as a primary
organizing principle in the
program's renewal.”
Peter Grimmett (1995) "Inquiring into teacher education" in Collaborative
research in teacher education: the SFU experience (pg. 165)

23. Research Question
How will modeling critical mindedness
and critical reflection lead me to a
deeper awareness of my own
educational assumptions, and support
beginning teachers in making
connections between a critical
examination of theoretically
informed, evidence based teaching
practices and their own pedagogical
understandings and emerging
teaching paradigms?

24. A critical self
awareness of
our
pedagogical
assumptions

30. "Already we are disposed towards inquiry. It is
all about cultivating mindfulness in the work we
do. Certainly there is no point promoting a form
of inquiry that merely places additional demands
upon people's time and commitment; rather our
intention should be to press beyond a reflective
agenda that adds to the busywork of teachers
and to encourage a bodily reflection that strives
to articulate the meanings of the practices in
which we are engaged, and in that
articulation, further inform those practices.”
- Stephen Smith Bearing of Inquiry...

31. “(t)hrough the development of the critical
reflective capacity student teachers will be
able to clearly articulate their teaching
philosophies and begin to understand how
an informed examination of practice
can, and should be, a normative condition
of teaching.”
- Jonathan Vervaet

32. …in the face of educational change

33. me.

34. "I want to stay
as close to
the edge as I
can without
going over.
Out on the
edge you see
all kinds of
things you
can't see from
the center."

35. We learn by going where
we have to go.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

41. Relationships are all there is. Everything in
the universe only exists because it is in
relationship to everything else. Nothing
exists in isolation. We have to stop
pretending we are individuals who can go it
alone.
- M. Wheatley

42. Reflection in
and of itself is
not enough; it
must always be
linked to how
the world can
be changed”
(Brookfield, 19
95)

43. Be the
change you
want to see
in the
world.
- Mahatma
Gandhi

45. How do we begin to define or
shape our personal and
professional identities through
contemplating these
dispositions?

46. In what ways do these dispositions play
a role in how one defines what it
means to ‘be teacher?’

47. Choose one of the dispositions that
you connect with on a personal or
professional level.
Reflect on how this disposition might
impact your personal or professional
identity.

48. Pedagogical Sensitivity
Other Directedness
Reflective Capacity
Critical Mindedness

49. Ticket Out the Door: An
idea I want to inquire into /
reflect on further is…