| Educators agree that “teaching is a complex intellectual activity played out in an equally complex social setting” (Griffin, 1999, p. 7). To meet these complexities, teachers need pedagogical knowledge that is complex and integrated enough to help them deal effectively with numerous dynamics of the classroom. This project asks what factors might be associated with the development of advanced pedagogical knowledge.; A survey research design is employed here to examine how experience and personality dispositions—reflection, emotions, and motivation—are associated with Pedagogical Conceptions. The subjects are 171, K–12 public school teachers. Ammon's et al. (1984, 1989, 1998) Pedagogical Conceptions model provided the basics for a scale that was employed to evaluate teachers' thinking about teaching. Additional scales were developed to evaluate teachers' reflectiveness, emotional adaptability, and motivation orientations. These are the Reflective Practice, Emotional Adaptability, and Self-Worth Motivation scales.; Results reveal that (1) teaching experience, Emotional Adaptability, and Reflective Practice have a direct, positive relationship with Pedagogical Conception levels; and (2) Positive Emotion and Self-Worth motivation orientations are directly and positively related to Reflective Practice.; The implications of these findings for teacher education are three-fold. First, teacher educators need to provide opportunities for teachers to construct knowledge about emotion. Emotional knowledge can enhance teachers' capacities to successfully deal with the emotional complexities of the classroom that begins to improve pedagogical knowledge. Second, incorporating the components of the Reflective Practice model can advance teachers' capacities to unravel, decipher, and resolve everyday classroom problems that lead to better understandings about pedagogy. Finally, providing experiences to develop a Positive Emotional Repertoire and an Approach motivation orientation begin to an enhanced Reflective Practice disposition. Along with Emotional Adaptability, this disposition augments existing Pedagogical Conceptions towards more advance ones. |
