Professional Dispositions in Educational Environment - Essay Example


Professional Dispositions
One of the professional dispositions that I cherish is empathy. Empathy helps me identify with other people’s frames of reference. As an educator, I approach teaching with an understanding that learners have their own beliefs, opinions, and biases that they might not readily volunteer to others. This helps me remain sensitive to the feelings and needs of learners thus developing an effective learning relationship (Reid et. al., 2011). Beyond giving me an understanding into the subjective world-view of individual learners, empathy helps to communicate this understanding to them in a caring way. I reckon that it is encouraging for students to know that their educator understands and accepts them. Empathy helps me not to judge learners unfairly and instead, accept and respect their perceptions and opinions unconditionally.
Empathy is a strength in me as it helps me create an environment conducive to harmonious learning. It would be chaotic trying to impart knowledge on to individuals whom I have not taken time to understand. Lack of an understanding about my learners’ subjective worlds would make me judge the things they do and the way they do them. Empathy saves me the trouble of getting agitated by something that my learners do or say and instead savors this energy for helping my learners to rise above their biases and any other opinion that can hinder effective learning (Reid et. al., 2011). As a strength empathy helps me identify the areas in which individual learners need assistance and as such, I can attend to individual needs besides attending to the needs of the larger class. Individualized attention helps students be free and express their fears and weaknesses to me as an educator out of trust. Individualized attention is instrumental in improving the performance of learners.
Authenticity is my other professional disposition with which I approach my work as an educator. Authenticity helps me reckon that different learners have different needs and as such I vary my methods and approaches to teaching. This comes with an understanding that the method or approach that works for an individual learner or group of learners may not work for another. I emphasize originality and uniqueness in the execution of my duties and in delivery of content to learners. Authenticity helps me accept my weaknesses and shortcomings and allows me to express myself with genuineness and honesty (Reid et. al., 2011). I do not pretend to impress my learners but through appropriate self-disclosure, I make them understand that as an educator, I am a person with strengths and weaknesses and that am not perfect. It is this professional disposition that helps me feel that I do not have to have an outstanding position or a unique privilege for me to feel valued and worthy as an educator.
Authenticity is a strength because it helps me customize my experience with my learners. The openness and freedom that authenticity fosters enables me to enjoy my profession and to extend the same to learners to help them love and appreciate learning. Authenticity frees me from the bonds of trying to copy another person and the way they approach their profession. It fosters creativity and innovation in me as I seek to vary my approaches, techniques and methods of delivery. This promotes self-fulfillment and gives me a chance to know the methods, techniques and approaches that work and those that do not work (Reid et. al., 2011). I believe that education is a profession that needs one to be original and unique.
References
Reid, A., Abrandt, D. M., Dahlgren, L. O., & Petocz, P. (2011). From Expert Student to Novice Professional. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Read More