Troubling Dispositions

The terminology of dispositions has always troubled me, but I think I have now found the perfect quote that illuminates and echoes my sentiments and concerns, and it is provoked by the value in Reggio Emilia on reflecting on our image of the child. 

 The moment we want to say who somebody is, our very vocabulary leads us astray into saying what he is; we get entangled in a description of qualities he necessarily shares with others like him; we begin to describe a type or a "character" in the old meaning of the word, with the result that his specific uniqueness escapes us (Arendt, 1998, p. 181).

The word ‘dispositions’ for me represents a label, a generalisation, a simplification and a reduction in the complexity of a human being. The definition listed in the Early Years Learning and Development Framework V2, refers to learning dispositions as habits of mind. The word habit is problematic for me as it speaks to certainty rather than uncertainty.  I certainly do not deny that behaviour can be repetitive and observed through patterns, however, I prefer to privilege the word attitudes and refer to children’s attitudes to learning.  For me, the word attitudes represents the complexity and uncertainty of a human being, it represents the value of the past, the present and the future and it advocates for an image of a child whose behaviour is not always habitual and eternally uniform. 

Like Levinas, I celebrate otherness and rather than looking for commonality amongst children and categorising them with a disposition, I would prefer to think of each child as being inherently unique.

Kerrie O'Neill, December, 2024.

Reference:

Arendt, H. (1998) The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press