Pre-Service Teachers: Dispositional Traits, Emotional States, and Quality of Teacher-Student Interactions

Abstract

Introduction Ensuring that American classrooms have teachers who can provide quality instruction and positive interactions with students is of national interest and concern. Such focus is evidenced by the No Child Left Behind Act mandate that every American classroom be supplied with a certified and content-trained highly qualified teacher (No Child Left Behind Act of 2001). This directive is born out of the assumption that teachers who have content knowledge and credentialed training are best suited to serve students. Teacher credentials, however, have shown little predictive value in identifying which teachers are most successful for student outcomes (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2004; Pianta & Allen, 2008). Given this, new ways of thinking about what influences teachers to be effective in their instructional interactions with students are needed. Psychology research has found that individuals' personality traits, separate from their educational training, are useful in predicting attitudes, behaviors, performance, and outcomes in organizational settings (Ones, Dilchert, Viswesvaran, & Judge, 2007). Given the interactive nature of teaching, dispositional characteristics (i.e., traits that dispose a person towards certain behaviors, choices, and experiences) like assertiveness and openness or emotional states such as sadness, worry, and stress may play important roles in a teacher's ability to interact in meaningful, engaging, and effective ways with students. Preliminary work in the teaching field has found associations between teacher beliefs and attitudes and their effectiveness in their interactions with students (Howes, Burchinal, Pianta, Bryant, Early, Clifford, et al., 2008). Additionally, early work in teaching reading has identified teachers' attitudes as extremely influential on their effectiveness (Ruddell, 1999). Other work has found emotional states, particularly depression and stress, to be linked with teachers' performance in the classroom (Hamre & Pianta, 2004). These examples support the general acknowledgment in the teaching field of the importance of these other dispositional traits. The importance of dispositional traits is further evidenced by the National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) identifying as one of its core accreditation standards attention to and measurement of candidate professional (NCATE, 2008). The notion of dispositions has not been well-defined, however, and not typically focused on in pre-service teacher training (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007). The present study aims to better understand the dispositional traits and emotional states of pre-service teachers and the association between these attributes and the effectiveness of their interactions with students. We examine two dispositional traits that hold particular promise: personality and adult attachment style. We also examine three emotional states: depression, anxiety, and stress. Additionally, the present study asks whether these qualities of pre-service teachers are similar to their same age peers, if they remain stable over time, and whether they predict preservice teachers' interactions with students in their student-teaching experience. The results of this study have important implications for teacher education and for understanding the characteristics of those individuals who are entering the teaching profession and who may show early promise as effective teachers. Background and Significance Personality Personality characteristics predispose an individual to interpret events in a particular way, which support or hinder adaptive and psychologically healthy behaviors and interactions (Kokkinos, 2007). An extensive line of research has revealed a Big Five structure of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992). This five-factor model has been described as the most compelling conceptualization of personality to date (Teven, 2007). …