Dispositions

Competency is expertise that individuals can demonstrate in professional, educational, social, or other life contexts. Competencies include content knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

Without a drive to do so, individuals may not effectively utilize their knowledge and skills [1, 2]. Dispositions are personal qualities, beliefs, and attitudes that guide a person in identifying why a task needs to be done and motivate them to follow through action or behavior [3]. Most dispositions are valuable across domains. For example, being perseverent will drive a student or professional to keep going in the face of obstacles, while being adaptable will ensure that they are open to multiple solutions. Valuing life-long learning will ensure that they will continue to learn throughout their careers, crucial in today’s world.

You can review our research-based list of dispositions for computing professionals. Students in engineering, engineering technology, and other professional programs will benefit from the same skills, though the specifics of how they are demonstrated may be task- and context-specific.

Rather than being limited to a single profession, dispositions are broadly acknowledged as essential for navigating the ever-changing work environment [4, 5].

How are dispositions taught and assessed?

While many believe that dispositions are in-born or unteachable, they actually are malleable – that means that they can be developed over time and can be fostered through educational experiences. [6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

Dispositions can be fostered through a variety of pedagogical techniques, most of which allow them to be integrated within disciplinary projects or tasks.  Some include:

• Instructor modeling of disposition through communicating their thought process.
• Using case studies to highlight the presence or absence of the disposition, and the impacts.
• Carefully constructed activities which foster the disposition (e.g., have students discuss and record various ideas at several decision points to aid with adaptability).
• Whole class and small group discussion related to the disposition.
• Student reflection on their own development of the disposition.
• Professionals discussing the importance of the disposition (in-person visit; video; etc.)
• Enculturation – everyone in the program exhibiting the disposition, including faculty, students, senior peers.

Make sure to explicitly develop dispositions through a variety of activities within and across courses. A spiral model is ideal for planning for disposition development.

Dispositions are not observable, and therefore cannot be directly assessed. However, that does not mean that they are not accessible. Indirect assessments can be done in a variety of ways, including:

• Written self-evaluation of student’s own development.
• Evaluation of written, video, or audio reflections.
• Peer feedback, e.g., in group activities.
• Oral assessments through interviewing students.
• Student demonstration of completing a task while communicating their thought process.
• Completion of a self-evaluation tool (coming soon).

Rubrics can be used in each case to provide quick feedback as well as for grading purposes.

Open Educational Resource repository

• Take a look at our OER repository for materials and activities you could use in your own classroom to foster and assess dispositions. 
• Many of the pedagogical strategies and practices will be applicable to fostering cross-disciplinary skills.

[1] Perkins, D., Tishman, S., Ritchhart, R., Donis, K., & Andrade, A. (2000). Intelligence in the wild: A dispositional view of intellectual traits. Educational Psychology Review, 12(3), 269–293. doi:10.1023/A:1009031605464

[2] Perkins, D. N., Jay, E., & Tishman, S. (1993). Beyond abilities: a dispositional theory of thinking: The development of rationality and critical thinking. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (1960), 39(1), 1–21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23087298

[3] Tagare, D., Janakiraman, S., Exter, M., Duan, S., Sabin, M., & Tavakoli, J. (2023a). Dispositions that computing professionals value in the workplace: Systematic literature review and interviews with professionals. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research V.1, 270–283. doi:10.1145/3568813.3600118

[4] Dede, C., & Etemadi, A. (2022). Between skills and success: Developing workers’ dispositions for applying skills in an uncertain, disruptive world. Practitioner Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN2022), 78–82. doi:/10.56198/A6PFYQSYJ

[5] Luke, J., & Bartlett, C. (2024). Bridging the gap: Graduate dispositional employability and the interconnected relationship between third space career and learning support services. Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability, 15(2), 27–40. doi:/10.21153/jtlge2024vol15no2art2034  

[6] Borko, H., Liston, D., & Whitcomb, J. A. (2007). Genres of empirical research in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 3–11. doi:10.1177/0022487106296220

[7] Diez, M. E. (2007). Looking back and moving forward: Three tensions in the teacher dispositions discourse. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(5), 388–396. doi:/10.1177/0022487107308418

[8] Nelsen, P. J. (2015). Intelligent dispositions: Dewey, habits and inquiry in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(1), 86–97.doi:/10.1177/0022487114535267 

[9] Dottin, E. S. (2009). Professional judgment and dispositions in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(1), 83–88. doi:/10.1016/j.tate.2008.06.005 

[10] Tubino, L., & Cain, A. (2024). Fostering and assessing dispositions by providing grades a meaning in a computing education context. Proceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1, 436–442. doi:/10.1145/3649217.3653616