
 knowing how to behave intelligently when you
DON'T know the answer.
having a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known: dichotomies, dilemmas, enigmas and uncertainties.
Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick, Habits of Mind, A Developmental Series

 Performative Literacy – knowledge that enables readers to activate and use all the other forms of knowledge required for the exercise of anything like a critical or disciplined literacy
Sheridan Blau, Performative Literacy: The Habits of Highly Literate Readers


… ways of thinking that one acquires so well, makes so natural, and incorporates so fully into one’s repertoire, that they become mental habits – not only can one draw upon them easily, one is likely to do so.
E. Paul Goldenberg, “ Habits of Mind” as an Organizer for the Curriculum

 Intelligence can be taught (Whimbey, 1975)
 Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1983)
 Learnable Intelligence (Perkins, 1995)
 Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, 1995)
 Moral Intelligence (Coles, 1997)
(Costa and Kallick)



People know how to think better about something, but are not disposed to do so …
“Without inclination, a person will not feel drawn toward X behavior. Without sensitivity, a person will not detect an X occasion.”
Perkins, Jay, and Tishman, Beyond Abilities: A Dispositional Theory of Thinking

Habits of mind …



 emphasize attitudes, habits, and character traits in addition to cognitive skills; accommodate roles that emotions play in good learning; encourage intellectual “sensitivity” – recognizing opportunities to engage in intellectual behavior; support thought across and beyond disciplines.
(Costa and Kallick)

A curriculum organized around habits of mind …


 builds a background for advanced study in the discipline gives a strong sense of how practice in the discipline is actually done serves the needs of students preparing for advanced study as well as students who have not developed skills or interest in the discipline
(Goldenberg)

Finally, talking about habits of mind …

 provides a common talking point for instructors across disciplines and grade levels allows course designers to choose those habits of mind that best serve most students general education purposes.
(Goldenberg)

4.
5.
6.
1.
2.
3.
7.
8.
9.
Persisting
Managing impulsivity
Listening to others
Thinking Flexibly
Thinking about thinking
Striving for accuracy and precision
Questioning
Applying past knowledge to new situations
Thinking and communicating with accuracy and precision
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Gathering data through all senses
Creating, imagining, and innovating
Responding with wonder and awe
Taking responsible risks
Finding humor
Thinking interdependently
Learning Continuously

5.
6.
7.
3.
4.
1.
2.
To be broad and adventurous
Toward sustained intellectual curiosity
To clarify and seek understanding
To be planful and strategic
To be intellectually careful
To seek and evaluate reasons
To be metacognitive
(Perkins, Jay, and Tishman)

3.
4.
5.
6.
1.
2.
Respect for reasons and truth
Respect for highquality products and performances
Inquiring attitude
Open-mindedness
Fair-mindedness
Independentmindedness
7.
8.
9.
Respect for others in group inquiry and deliberation
Respect for legitimate intellectual authority
Intellectual work ethic
Bailins, Case, Coombs, and Daniels, Conceptualizing Critical Thinking

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
1.
2.
Sustained focused attention
Willingness to suspend closure – to entertain problems rather than avoid them
Willingness to take risks
Tolerance for failure – willingness to re-read and re-read again
Tolerance for ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty
Intellectual generosity and fallibility
Capacity to monitor and direct one’s own reading process – metacognitive awareness

Ted Sizer proposes:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Perspective
Analysis
Imagination
Empathy
Communication
Commitment
Humility
Joy
CPESS habits of mind:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Evidence – how do we know what we know?
Perspective – who says?
Connection – what causes what?
Supposition – what if?
Relevance – who cares?
Habits of Mind . CESNationalweb. http://www.essentialschools.org

st
4.
5.
6.
1.
2.
3.
Curiosity
Questioning
Observation (through paying attention)
Analysis (understanding the parts)
Integration (understanding the whole)
Persistence
Habits of Mind. Office of First-year Experience, Brigham Young University

1.
2.
3.
4.
Curiosity
Openness
Skepticism
* Balance between the two a central tension in all science. Too skeptical results in no new ideas tested.
Too open results in no commitment to existing ideas.
Communication
Willingness to discuss and debate, share, cooperate and collaborate.
Mark Volkmann and David Eichinger, Habits of Mind: Integrating the Social and Personal Characteristics of Doing Science into the Science
Classroom.

Students should be …
Cuocco, Goldenberg, and Mark.
Habits of Mind: an Organizing Principle for Mathematics Curricula
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Pattern sniffers
Experimenters
Describers
Tinkerers
Inventors
Visualizers
Conjecturers
Guessers

3.
4.
5.
1.
2.
6.
Open mindedness
Fair-mindedness
Independent-mindedness
Inquiring or “critical” attitude
Respect for high quality products and performances
Intellectual work ethic
Roland Case and Ian Wright, Taking Seriously the Teaching of Critical Thinking

What we are proposing is something a bit different. It is not an act of faith that taking mathematics seriously gives one the mathematics directly and
(also) improves one’s thinking, but almost the reverse: taking particular ways of thinking seriously and giving them top priority among the various principles one needs for organizing mathematics (or other) curricula, gives one the thinking skills directly and also improves one’s mathematics.
(Goldenberg)

In considering habits, Goldenberg proposes …
1)
What “habits of mind” do people need to be safe, healthy, employable, socially connected ...? What
“habits” will they need to be adaptive to unforeseen obstacles and new problems
2) a.
b.
What special contributions to that thinking can my discipline make?
What knowledge and skills from my discipline best help to deliver the message about thinking?
What might best convey the flavor of my discipline?
c.
What might be the most broadly useful to students?

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
Horace Mann

Habit:


A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.
An established disposition of the mind or character.
Habituate:
 To accustom by frequent repetition or prolonged exposure
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

A habits of mind approach requires:





Multiple opportunities for practice, becoming increasingly varied and complex and in different contexts over time.
“Thinking Occasions”
(Barry Beyer, Improving Student Learning )
Providing Scaffolds
Modeling
Opportunity for reflection and “self-talk”

Beyer, quoting Vygotsky, notes that –

Thinking occasions are not “time to think” add-ons.
Rather, they are occasions that demand thinking.
 These occasions actually provoke thinking, by triggering it and calling it into play.

 A Support for thinking



Strategies/Mental Models
Worksheets/ graphic organizers
Modeling open-ended nature of research

At some point in our lives, each part of the intellectual process demanded our full concentration. But once learned
(or, more precisely, once mastered), our mental habits became so automatic that they faded from view.
It is that very point that spells trouble in the classroom. For the same aspects of cognition that ease our job as thinkers pose the greatest threat to our effectiveness as teachers.
Our familiar mental habits, often overlooked or omitted when we describe our thinking processes to others, can create a gulf between us and our students.
Sam Wineburg, Teaching the Mind Good Habits

Professors may assume that their students are stupid or suffer from a learning disability. Often the truth is much simpler: No one has ever bothered to teach them some basic but powerful skills of interpretation.
As teachers, we need to remember what the world looked like before we learned our discipline's ways of seeing it. We need to show our students the patient and painstaking processes by which we achieved expertise. Only by making our footsteps visible can we expect students to follow in them.
Wineburg