Abstract
Teaching art well in the Conceptual Age requires more from preservice art teachers than knowledge and skills; candidates will need capacities that inspire joy, empathy, and innovation (Pink, 2006). Dispositions that contextualize these capacities come from the affective aptitudes of teachers’ inner lives where feelings, perceptions, and beliefs reside (Klein, 2008). This article offers a theoretical, research-based interpretation of findings from a preceding study that observed a positive relationship between teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy and sense of humor beliefs. Data collected from K–12 art teachers (N = 354) on auto-report scales measured perceptions of their humor on four dimensions and teaching self-efficacy on three dimensions. The findings, joined with an analysis of corroborating research, identify five teacher dispositions that intersect humor with self-efficacy. Teacher educators are urged to consider developing dispositions that strengthen preservice self-efficacy beliefs for success in the ambiguous 21st century.
Acknowledgments
This article is based on data in a previously published article: Evans-Palmer, T. (2010). The potency of humor and instructional self-efficacy on art teacher stress. Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research in Art Education, 52(1), 69-83. Digital copies of the instruments used in the study, the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, Citation2001) and the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS; Thorson & Powell, Citation1993a), are available from the author upon request.
Notes
1 Retrieved from www.taea.org/taea/default.asp