The 8 MnEDS Dispositions Strands

The MnEDS disposition framework grounds equity as a core element in successful teaching, recognizing its heightened importance in schools whose teacher population does not mirror the racial, socioeconomic, linguistic, and ethnic diversity of their students. Equity means school systems must be fair--personal attributes of an individual (e.g., race, class, gender, sexual identity, language) should not limit one’s opportunity for success. Equity demands that we create access to opportunities within systems that have historically been denied to some students. Ladson-Billings (2006) argued that we have accumulated an “education debt” in the United States through historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral factors and decisions regarding public school systems. Through systematic denial of access to resources, opportunity, quality instruction, and curriculum that feels personal and empowering students of color, English learners, and newly immigrated students are at a larger disadvantage today than their white, English-speaking counterparts. Our schooling system today requires differentiated access and support in order to provide equitable education for all students. Educators must work to bring about a more socially just set of schooling practices in order for all students, and especially historically marginalized students, to experience school with full access and fairness.

Working inside classrooms and schools requires that we pay close attention to the everyday-ness of interactions between and among students, teachers, paraprofessionals, and administrators. We are convinced that a conceptual frame of cultural relevance is needed for teacher leadership enactment. Ladson-Billings (1995) identified three fundamental characteristics of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP): 1) students experience academic success; 2) students experience instruction with cultural integrity that allows them to maintain their cultural identity while engaging in high level work; and 3) students are challenged to develop a critical socio-political consciousness and to analyze macro-social norms. These three tenets help us define the development of teaching dispositions that affirm multiple definitions of success in school, welcome and embrace cultural differences within classrooms, playgrounds, and hallways, and bolster pedagogical courage to lead and facilitate classrooms where students develop critical consciousness and question the status quo. To this end, we have identified 8 strands within this disposition framework:

1. ASSETS: Uses the assets of students, families, colleagues, and communities to inform teaching and learning.

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

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

4. CARE: 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. NAVIGATION: Navigates 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. ADVOCACY: Advocates in dynamic and responsive ways for students, families and systemic change in the pursuit of equity in schools.

MnEDS™ Research Group