Building awareness of dispositions: enhancing moral sensibilities in teaching

The purpose of this paper is to explain why and how dispositions can operate as a mechanism for enhancing teacher candidates’ moral sensibilities. Dispositions conjoin the knowledge and skills of teaching with the commitments one has to achieve intended purposes. Dispositions build candidates’ awareness of their own perceptions (and misperceptions) and how they can best connect their intentions with their practice, given their perception of the specific teaching situation. Teacher education programs foster candidates’ moral sensibilities when they help candidates connect their intention with their perception and with their practice. After exploring a conceptual rationale, three teacher candidates’ case study analyses are presented, illustrating a window into candidates’ inclinations toward particular behaviors and their awareness, or lack of awareness, into how they perceive teaching situations and connect their intention and practice.