Handout for Teacher Candidates

To be a successful teacher, you must learn to be knowledgeable about content and pedagogy, skillful in how you translate knowledge and facilitate learning for your students, and committed to forging relationships and building a classroom community so that all students learn at the edges of their abilities.

The commitments you make as a classroom teacher are evident in the pedagogical choices you make, the curriculum you construct, your interactions with students, teachers, and colleagues, and in the ways you carry yourself as an educator. We call these dispositions.  During the teacher licensure program, all teacher candidates will be assessed on their knowledge, skills, and dispositions. 

In 2016-17 the College of Education and Human Development will be in the second year of piloting a new dispositions assessment system grounded in equity-based teaching. The new disposition system creates opportunities for coaching and development of dispositions for teaching. Below are the eight dispositions coached and assessed within the new Minnesota Educator Dispositions System.

 

1.    A​SSETS:​ Uses the assets of students, families, and communities to inform teaching and learning.

2.    R​OLE of SELF:​ Develops an ongoing critical awareness of one’s self, and establishes a critically aware teaching presence in the classroom.

3.    C​OLLABORATION and COMMUNICATION: Collaborates and communicates with students, families, communities, and colleagues for purposes of teaching and learning across various contexts.

4.    C​ARE:​ Builds relationships with students through empathy and care to support students’ resilience.

5.    INTENTIONAL PROFESSIONAL CHOICES:​ Makes intentional professional choices for teaching and learning (based on continued inquiry of one’s own practice, knowledge of students, context and content).

6.    N​AVIGATION: N​avigates the complexities of multiple contexts of teaching and learning in ways that are responsive to the needs of students. 

7.    IMAGINATION and INNOVATION:​ Responds to the dynamic nature of teaching with creativity and imagination in practice to affect teaching and learning.

8.    A​DVOCACY:​ Advocates in dynamic and responsive ways for students, families and systemic change in the pursuit of equity in schools.

MnEDS™ Disposition Rubrics

We describe the four categories of the MnEDS rubrics here.

The MnEDS Disposition Framework, with all eight strands and the corresponding rubric, are on the pages that follow.

 

STRAND 1: Assets

 

STRAND 2: Role of Self

 

STRAND 3: Collaboration and Communication

 

STRAND 4: Care

 

STRAND 5: Intentional, Professional Choices

 

STRAND 6: Navigation

 

STRAND 7: Imagination and Innovation

 

STRAND 8: Advocacy

 

© Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved. 

    MnEDS™ Research Group