Introduction

How do pre-service teachers (PSTs) negotiate the gritty reality of teaching? And how can teacher educators best prepare PSTs for an increasingly challenging profession?  With the task of designing a new Master of Teaching (Secondary) program four years ago came the opportunity to collaboratively identify what we and our school partners believed was at the heart of good teaching. While many of our ideas linked well to the Australian Graduate Teaching Standards, there were other capacities that lay beyond the standards, or perhaps at the basis of them.

These were what we have come to refer to as thinking dispositions.  Since then we have developed an evidence-based Dispositions for Teaching Framework which informs the design of teaching and learning experiences with our partnership schools, assessment tasks and the feedback offered to PSTs.  We are keen to know whether the dispositions in our framework act as a resource for building resilience and our authentic case enables us to engage in this inquiry.