Teachers worldwide are being asked to teach in classrooms and schools with increasing numbers of diverse students and colleagues. Diversity comes in the form of language, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, class, etc. Teacher education is therefore called on to include not only the process of teaching actual instructional methods, but also to include avenues to increase future educators’ beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and skills to work with increasingly diverse populations, commonly referred to as Dispositions. To this end, our research focuses on two questions: 1) How can the university assess these dispositions? and  2) How can the university improve these dispositions? We used a framework from Multicultural Counseling Competencies, which focuses on personal beliefs and attitudes before developing knowledge and skills. Additionally, the Multicultural Counseling Competency framework indicates development through self-awareness, understanding different worldviews, and developing appropriate strategies and techniques.

From this framework, we understand that the teacher education process must include various levels of learning from self-examination and personal development, to interpersonal communication skills, to curiosity about and acceptance of all types of diversity. This presents deep challenges for classroom instruction, and for assessment. This research reports a process of establishing common language and purposes among the university faculty about dispositions, a process of assessing students longitudinally, and using those assessment results as feedback to the university faculty. Faculty were encouraged to examine the resulting feedback from the student perspective of the entire university degree, so they could situate themselves in the longitudinal process of teaching a specific class, but not have to feel responsible for the entire process.

As areas of needed improvement are identified, an administrator works together with the program faculty to identify where and when the specific dispositions can be reinforced in the student experience. Suggested readings, activities, and assignments that focus on the area of improvement within the Multicultural Counseling Competency framework are incorporated in order to bolster the identified areas.

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