Assessing Preservice Teachers' Dispositions in a UTPP: Instrument Development as a Curricular Resource

This study focused on the importance of dispositional development in Urban Teacher Preparation Programs (UTPPs) as a curricular resource. A 20-item instrument that used a four-stage process to measure dispositional development for preservice teachers who were enrolled in teacher preparation programs, particularly urban-based areas, was created using expert and empirical validity to explore this area of teacher development. The study population included preservice teachers in an Urban Teacher Residency Program (UTRP) based in a mid-Atlantic university.;Research around the importance of dispositions for preservice teachers along with the four stages of dispositional development used for this study assisted in the creation of the self-assessment instrument. The two stage process for the self-assessment included expert and empirical validation. Five experts provided their professional knowledge to examine content validity of the entire instrument along with groups of five items focused on a particular developmental stage. Factor analysis, both confirmatory and exploratory, were used to show empirical validation using SPSS. Thirteen preservice teachers completed the instrument, Dispositional Development Self-Assessment for Preservice Teachers, with eleven being found valid for factor analysis testing.;The results of the study provided evidence that the initial survey was characteristic of the four-stage dispositional development process based on the review by the five experts. Wording of the survey instrument was revised prior to the empirical validation portion of the study; however, the sample size proved to be too small for valid results and must be retested in the future. Exploratory factor analysis showed seven factors with eigenvalues of a minimum of 1.0 instead of the desired four for the revised instrument and confirmatory factor analysis exhibited an uneven number of items for each of the four factors with a majority being assigned to the fourth factor. The Varimax orthogonal rotation procedure was used to clarify the factor loadings found in the extraction without rotation. Due to the small sample size, future testing is recommended to empirically validate the instrument with another expert validation to accompany the second testing.