Assessment of Math Teachers’ Dispositions to Improve Urban Teacher-Leaders’ Growth and Effectiveness

Abstract

This paper focuses on the dispositions of in-service math teacher-leaders, as defined in the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Standards by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on 10 sets of critical dispositions. Teachers (N = 281) were assessed using versions of two instruments developed as part of the Disposition Assessment Aligned with Teacher Standards (DAATS) battery. One instrument is a self report questionnaire called Beliefs About Teaching 2 (BATS2), and the second is a guided reflection, the Experiential Teaching Questionnaire (ETQ2). Item analysis and scoring were done utilizing the Rasch model of item response theory and scaled on a modification of the original Krathwohl affective taxonomy. A discussion of the validity and reliability of these versions of the instrumentation is included, along with a qualitative review of sample responses illustrating the scoring. Finally, there is a discussion of the standards, indicating that the participating math teacher-leaders were consistent with the InTASC Standards. One conclusion is that math teacher-leaders have a lower than expected ability to value diverse learners in valuing diverse learners.