Professional Dispositions and Values
Over 2,500 years ago, Plato challenged Socrates by asking, “Can you, Socrates, tell me, is human excellence something teachable?” Today, most institutions of higher learning are struggling with measuring the excellence that all profess and encourage.
The theme of “Professional Dispositions and Values” encourages us to move beyond considerations of professionalism and professional competencies to those qualities of our students’ characters and moral imaginations.
As educational professionals, we will have the unique opportunity to reflect on our professional dispositions while publicly engaging with inquiring colleagues as we address the “bigger” questions: What are professional dispositions and values? What are the means for teaching professional dispositions and values? What is the extent to which the means are within the power of our teaching and learning processes?
These questions will take center stage during the 2008 Institute. However, the Institute’s primary focus remains developing approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning from a wide range of perspectives and in any discipline.
Proposals that explicitly respond to the inclusive theme of “Professional Dispositions and Values” are encouraged, but doing so is not required.