ABSTRACT
Teachers must possess the professional triumvirate of knowledge, skills, and dispositions to be effective. Researchers have built the backbone of teacher education describing knowledge (Heibert, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002; Leinhardt, 1990) and skills (Freiberg & Driscoll, 2000) needed to engender quality teachers. Yet the third construct, dispositions, has failed to garner the same type of gravitas in the field. Despite its marginalization in teacher education (Schussler, Bercaw, & Stooksberry, 2008), the critical study of dispositions for social justice may help to characterize its academic worth (Murray, 2007; Villegas, 2007) and serve as the linchpin for recognizing and selecting quality educators for the twenty-first century.
