“Chapter 2. Describing the Habits of Mind.” Edited by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick, Describing the Habits of Mind, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2009, www.ascd.org/publications/books/108008/chapters/Describing-the-Habits-of-Mind.aspx.
When we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
—Wendell Berry
This chapter contains descriptions for 16 of the attributes that human beings display when they behave intelligently. In this book, we refer to them as Habits of Mind. They are the characteristics of what intelligent people do when they are confronted with problems, the resolutions to which are not immediately apparent.
These Habits of Mind seldom are performed in isolation; rather, clusters of behaviors are drawn forth and used in various situations. For example, when listening intently, we use the habits of thinking flexibly, thinking about our thinking (metacognition), thinking and communicating with clarity and precision, and perhaps even questioning and posing problems.
Do not conclude, based on this list, that humans display intelligent behavior in only 16 ways. The list of the Habits of Mind is not complete. We want this list to initiate a collection of additional attributes. In fact, 12 attributes of "Intelligent Behavior" were first described in 1991 (Costa, 1991). Since then, through collaboration and interaction with many others, the list has been expanded. You, your colleagues, and your students will want to continue the search for additional Habits of Mind to add to this list of 16.
Educational outcomes in traditional settings focus on how many answers a student knows. When we teach for the Habits of Mind, we are interested also in how students behave when they don't know an answer. The Habits of Mind are performed in response to questions and problems, the answers to which are not immediately known. We are interested in enhancing the ways students produce knowledge rather than how they merely reproduce it. We want students to learn how to develop a critical stance with their work: inquiring, editing, thinking flexibly, and learning from another person's perspective. The critical attribute of intelligent human beings is not only having information but also knowing how to act on it.
What behaviors indicate an efficient, effective thinker? What do human beings do when they behave intelligently? Vast research on effective thinking, successful people, and intelligent behavior by Ames (1997), Carnegie and Stynes (2006), Ennis (1991), Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman, and Miller (1980), Freeley (as reported in Strugatch, 2004), Glatthorn and Baron (1991), Goleman (1995), Perkins (1991), Sternberg (1984), and Waugh (2005) suggests that effective thinkers and peak performers have identifiable characteristics. These characteristics have been identified in successful people in all walks of life: lawyers, mechanics, teachers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, physicians, athletes, entertainers, leaders, parents, scientists, artists, teachers, and mathematicians.
Horace Mann, a U.S. educator (1796–1859), once observed that "habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it." In Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind, we focus on 16 Habits of Mind that teachers and parents can teach, cultivate, observe, and assess. The intent is to help students get into the habit of behaving intelligently. A Habit of Mind is a pattern of intellectual behaviors that leads to productive actions. When we experience dichotomies, are confused by dilemmas, or come face-to-face with uncertainties, our most effective response requires drawing forth certain patterns of intellectual behavior. When we draw upon these intellectual resources, the results are more powerful, of higher quality, and of greater significance than if we fail to employ such patterns of intellectual behavior.
A Habit of Mind is a composite of many skills, attitudes, cues, past experiences, and proclivities. It means that we value one pattern of intellectual behaviors over another; therefore, it implies making choices about which patterns we should use at a certain time. It includes sensitivity to the contextual cues that signal that a particular circumstance is a time when applying a certain pattern would be useful and appropriate. It requires a level of skillfulness to use, carry out, and sustain the behaviors effectively. It suggests that after each experience in which these behaviors are used, the effects of their use are reflected upon, evaluated, modified, and carried forth to future applications. Figure 2.1 summarizes some of these dimensions of the Habits of Mind, which are elaborated in Chapter 3. The following sections describe each of the 16 Habits of Mind.
The Habits of Mind incorporate the following dimensions:
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Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they never quit.
—Conrad Hilton
Efficacious people stick to a task until it is completed. They don't give up easily. They are able to analyze a problem, and they develop a system, structure, or strategy to attack it. They have a repertoire of alternative strategies for problem solving, and they employ a whole range of these strategies. They collect evidence to indicate their problem-solving strategy is working, and if one strategy doesn't work, they know how to back up and try another. They recognize when a theory or an idea must be rejected and another employed. They have systematic methods for analyzing a problem, which include knowing how to begin, what steps must be performed, what data must be generated or collected, and what resources are available to assist. Because they are able to sustain a problem-solving process over time, they are comfortable with ambiguous situations.
Students often give up when they don't immediately know the answer to a problem. They sometimes crumple their papers and throw them away, exclaiming "I can't do this!" or "It's too hard!" Sometimes they write down any answer to get the task over with as quickly as possible. Some of these students have attention deficits. They have difficulty staying focused for any length of time; they are easily distracted, or they lack the ability to analyze a problem and develop a system, structure, or strategy of attack. They may give up because they have a limited repertoire of problem-solving strategies, and thus they have few alternatives if their first strategy doesn't work.
Goal-directed, self-imposed delay of gratification is perhaps the essence of emotional self-regulation: the ability to deny impulse in the service of a goal, whether it be building a business, solving an algebraic equation, or pursuing the Stanley Cup.
—Daniel Goleman
Effective problem solvers are deliberate: they think before they act. They intentionally establish a vision of a product, an action plan, a goal, or a destination before they begin. They strive to clarify and understand directions, they develop a strategy for approaching a problem, and they withhold immediate value judgments about an idea before they fully understand it. Reflective individuals consider alternatives and consequences of several possible directions before they take action. They decrease their need for trial and error by gathering information, taking time to reflect on an answer before giving it, making sure they understand directions, and listening to alternative points of view.
Often, students blurt out the first answer that comes to mind. Sometimes they shout an answer, start to work without fully understanding the directions, lack an organized plan or strategy for approaching a problem, or make immediate value judgments about an idea (criticizing or praising it) before they fully understand it. They may take the first suggestion given or operate on the first idea that comes to mind rather than consider alternatives and the consequences of several possible directions. Research demonstrates, however, that less impulsive, self-disciplined students are more successful. For example, Duckworth and Seligman (2005) found
Highly self-disciplined adolescents outperformed their more impulsive peers on every academic performance variable, including report-card grades, standardized achievement test scores, admission to a competitive high school and attendance. Self-discipline measured in the fall predicted more variance in each of these outcomes than did IQ, and unlike IQ, self-discipline predicted gains in academic performance over the school year. (p. 940)
Listening is the beginning of understanding. … Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening. Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance.
—Proverbs 1:5
Highly effective people spend an inordinate amount of time and energy listening (Covey, 1989). Some psychologists believe that the ability to listen to another person—to empathize with and to understand that person's point of view—is one of the highest forms of intelligent behavior. The ability to paraphrase another person's ideas; detect indicators (cues) of feelings or emotional states in oral and body language (empathy); and accurately express another person's concepts, emotions, and problems—all are indicators of listening behavior. (Piaget called it "overcoming egocentrism.")
People who demonstrate this Habit of Mind are able to see through the diverse perspectives of others. They gently attend to another person, demonstrating their understanding of and empathy for an idea or a feeling by paraphrasing it accurately, building upon it, clarifying it, or giving an example of it.
Senge, Roberts, Ross, Smith, and Kleiner (1994) suggest that to listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words—listening not only to the "music" but also to the essence of the person speaking; not only for what someone knows but also for what that person is trying to represent. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in oneself, slowing the mind's hearing to the ears' natural speed and hearing beneath the words to their meaning.
We spend 55 percent of our lives listening, but it is one of the least taught skills in schools. We often say we are listening, but actually we are rehearsing in our head what we are going to say when our partner is finished. Some students ridicule, laugh at, or put down other students' ideas. They interrupt, are unable to build upon, can't consider the merits of, or don't operate on another person's ideas.
We want students to learn to devote their mental energies to another person and to invest themselves in their partner's ideas. We want students to learn to hold in abeyance their own values, judgments, opinions, and prejudices so they can listen to and entertain another person's thoughts. This is a complex skill requiring the ability to monitor one's own thoughts while at the same time attending to a partner's words. Listening in this way does not mean we can't disagree with someone. Good listeners try to understand what other people are saying. In the end, they may disagree sharply, but because they have truly listened, they know exactly the nature of the disagreement.
Of all forms of mental activity, the most difficult to induce even in the minds of the young, who may be presumed not to have lost their flexibility, is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework, all of which virtually means putting on a different kind of thinking-cap for the moment. It is easy to teach anybody a new fact. … but it needs light from heaven above to enable a teacher to break the old framework in which the student is accustomed to seeing.
—Arthur Koestler
An amazing discovery about the human brain is its plasticity—its ability to "rewire," change, and even repair itself to become smarter. Flexible people have the most control. They have the capacity to change their minds as they receive additional data. They engage in multiple and simultaneous outcomes and activities, and they draw upon a repertoire of problem-solving strategies. They also practice style flexibility, knowing when thinking broadly and globally is appropriate and when a situation requires detailed precision. They create and seek novel approaches, and they have a well-developed sense of humor. They envision a range of consequences.
Flexible people can address a problem from a new angle using a novel approach, which de Bono (1991) refers to as "lateral thinking." They consider alternative points of view or deal with several sources of information simultaneously. Their minds are open to change based on additional information, new data, or even reasoning that contradicts their beliefs. Flexible people know that they have and can develop options and alternatives. They understand means-ends relationships. They can work within rules, criteria, and regulations, and they can predict the consequences of flouting them. They understand immediate reactions, but they also are able to perceive the bigger purposes that such constraints serve. Thus, flexibility of mind is essential for working with social diversity, enabling an individual to recognize the wholeness and distinctness of other people's ways of experiencing and making meaning.
Flexible thinkers are able to shift through multiple perceptual positions at will. One perceptual orientation is what Jean Piaget called egocentrism, or perceiving from our own point of view. By contrast, allocentrism is the position in which we perceive through another person's orientation. We operate from this second position when we empathize with another's feelings, predict how others are thinking, and anticipate potential misunderstandings.
Another perceptual position is macrocentric. It is similar to looking down from a balcony to observe ourselves and our interactions with others. This bird's-eye view is useful for discerning themes and patterns from assortments of information. It is intuitive, holistic, and conceptual. Because we often need to solve problems with incomplete information, we need the capacity to perceive general patterns and jump across gaps of incomplete knowledge.
Yet another perceptual orientation is microcentric, examining the individual and sometimes minute parts that make up the whole. This worm's eye view involves logical, analytical computation, searching for causality in methodical steps. It requires attention to detail, precision, and orderly progressions.
Flexible thinkers display confidence in their intuition. They tolerate confusion and ambiguity up to a point, and they are willing to let go of a problem, trusting their subconscious to continue creative and productive work on it. Flexibility is the cradle of humor, creativity, and repertoire. Although many perceptual positions are possible—past, present, future, egocentric, allocentric, macrocentric, microcentric, visual, auditory, kinesthetic—the flexible mind knows when to shift between and among these positions.
Some students have difficulty considering alternative points of view or dealing with more than one classification system simultaneously. Their way to solve a problem seems to be the only way. They perceive situations from an egocentric point of view: "My way or the highway!" Their minds are made up: "Don't confuse me with facts. That's it!"
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
—Plato
The human species is known as Homo sapiens sapiens, which basically means "a being that knows their knowing" (or maybe it's "knows they're knowing"). What distinguishes humans from other forms of life is our capacity for metacognition—the ability to stand off and examine our own thoughts while we engage in them.
Occurring in the neocortex, metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is our ability to know what we know and what we don't know. It is our ability to plan a strategy for producing the information that is needed, to be conscious of our own steps and strategies during the act of problem solving, and to reflect on and evaluate the productiveness of our own thinking. Although inner language, thought to be a prerequisite for metacognition, begins in most children around age 5, metacognition is a key attribute of formal thought flowering at about age 11.
The major components of metacognition are, when confronted with a problem to solve, developing a plan of action, maintaining that plan in mind over a period of time, and then reflecting on and evaluating the plan upon its completion. Planning a strategy before embarking on a course of action helps us keep track of the steps in the sequence of planned behavior at the conscious awareness level for the duration of the activity. It facilitates making temporal and comparative judgments; assessing the readiness for more or different activities; and monitoring our interpretations, perceptions, decisions, and behaviors. An example would be what superior teachers do daily: developing a teaching strategy for a lesson, keeping that strategy in mind throughout the instruction, and then reflecting upon the strategy to evaluate its effectiveness in producing the desired student outcomes.
Intelligent people plan for, reflect on, and evaluate the quality of their own thinking skills and strategies. Metacognition means becoming increasingly aware of one's actions and the effect of those actions on others and on the environment; forming internal questions in the search for information and meaning; developing mental maps or plans of action; mentally rehearsing before a performance; monitoring plans as they are employed (being conscious of the need for midcourse correction if the plan is not meeting expectations); reflecting on the completed plan for self-evaluation; and editing mental pictures for improved performance.
Interestingly, not all humans achieve the level of formal operations. As Russian psychologist Alexander Luria found, not all adults metacogitate. Although the human brain is capable of generating this reflective consciousness, generally we are not all that aware of how we are thinking, and not everyone uses the capacity for consciousness equally (Chiabetta, 1976; Csikszentmihalyi, 1993; Whimbey, Whimbey, & Shaw, 1975; Whimbey, 1980). The most likely reason is that all of us do not take the time to reflect on our experiences. Students often do not take the time to wonder why they are doing what they are doing. They seldom question themselves about their own learning strategies or evaluate the efficiency of their own performance. Some children virtually have no idea of what they should do when they confront a problem, and often they are unable to explain their decision-making strategies (Sternberg & Wagner, 1982). When teachers ask, "How did you solve that problem? What strategies did you have in mind?" or "Tell us what went on in your head to come up with that conclusion," students often respond, "I don't know. I just did it."
We want students to perform well on complex cognitive tasks. A simple example might be drawn from a reading task. While reading a passage, we sometimes find that our minds wander from the pages. We see the words, but no meaning is being produced. Suddenly, we realize that we are not concentrating and that we've lost contact with the meaning of the text. We recover by returning to the passage to find our place, matching it with the last thought we can remember, and once having found it, reading on with connectedness. This inner awareness and the strategy of recovery are components of metacognition.
A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake.
—Confucius
Whether we are looking at the stamina, grace, and elegance of a ballerina or a carpenter, we see a desire for craftsmanship, mastery, flawlessness, and economy of energy to produce exceptional results. People who value truthfulness, accuracy, precision, and craftsmanship take time to check over their products. They review the rules by which they are to abide, they review the models and visions they are to follow, and they review the criteria they are to use to confirm that their finished product matches the criteria exactly. To be craftsmanlike means knowing that one can continually perfect one's craft by working to attain the highest possible standards and by pursuing ongoing learning to bring a laserlike focus of energies to accomplishing a task.
These people take pride in their work, and they desire accuracy as they take time to check over their work. Craftsmanship includes exactness, precision, accuracy, correctness, faithfulness, and fidelity. For some people, craftsmanship requires continuous reworking. Mario Cuomo, a great speechwriter and politician, once said that his speeches were never done; it was only a deadline that made him stop working on them.
Some students may turn in sloppy, incomplete, or uncorrected work. They are more eager to get rid of the assignment than to check it over for accuracy and precision. They are willing to settle for minimum effort rather than invest their maximum. They may be more interested in expedience rather than excellence.
The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. … To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advances.
—Albert Einstein
One of the distinguishing characteristics of humans is our inclination and ability to find problems to solve. Effective problem solvers know how to ask questions to fill in the gaps between what they know and what they don't know. Effective questioners are inclined to ask a range of questions:
They also pose questions about alternative points of view:
Effective questioners pose questions that make causal connections and relationships:
Sometimes they pose hypothetical problems characterized by "if" questions:
Inquirers recognize discrepancies and phenomena in their environment, and they probe into their causes:
Some students may be unaware of the functions, classes, syntax, or intentions in questions. They may not realize that questions vary in complexity, structure, and purpose. They may pose simple questions intending to derive maximal results. When confronted with a discrepancy, they may lack an overall strategy to search for and find a solution.
I've never made a mistake. I've only learned from experience.
—Thomas A. Edison
Intelligent humans learn from experience. When confronted with a new and perplexing problem, they will draw forth experiences from their past. They often can be heard to say, "This reminds me of …" or "This is just like the time when I …" They explain what they are doing now with analogies about or references to their experiences. They call upon their store of knowledge and experience as sources of data to support, theories to explain, or processes to solve each new challenge. They are able to abstract meaning from one experience, carry it forth, and apply it in a novel situation.
Too often, students begin each new task as if it were being approached for the first time. Teachers are dismayed when they invite students to recall how they solved a similar problem previously—and students don't remember. It's as if they had never heard of it before, even though they recently worked with the same type of problem! It seems each experience is encapsulated and has no relationship to what has come before or what comes after. Their thinking is what psychologists refer to as an "episodic grasp of reality" (Feuerstein et al., 1980); that is, each event in life is separate and discrete, with no connections to what may have come before or no relation to what follows. Their learning is so encapsulated that they seem unable to draw it forth from one event and apply it in another context.
I do not so easily think in words. … After being hard at work having arrived at results that are perfectly clear … I have to translate my thoughts in a language that does not run evenly with them.
—Francis Galton, geneticist
Language refinement plays a critical role in enhancing a person's cognitive maps and ability to think critically, which is the knowledge base for efficacious action. Enriching the complexity and specificity of language simultaneously produces effective thinking.
Language and thinking are closely entwined; like either side of a coin, they are inseparable. Fuzzy, vague language is a reflection of fuzzy, vague thinking. Intelligent people strive to communicate accurately in both written and oral form, taking care to use precise language; defining terms; and using correct names, labels, and analogies. They strive to avoid overgeneralizations, deletions, and distortions. Instead, they support their statements with explanations, comparisons, quantification, and evidence.
We sometimes hear students and adults using vague and imprecise language. They describe objects or events with words like weird, nice, or OK. They name specific objects using such nondescriptive words as stuff, junk, things, and whatever. They punctuate sentences with meaningless interjections like ya know, er, and uh. They use vague or general nouns and pronouns: "They told me to do it," "Everybody has one," or "Teachers don't understand me." They use nonspecific verbs: "Let's do it." At other times, they use unqualified comparatives: "This soda is better; I like it more" (Shachtman, 1995).
Observe perpetually.
—Henry James
The brain is the ultimate reductionist. It reduces the world to its elementary parts: photons of light, molecules of fragrance, sound waves, vibrations of touch—all of which send electrochemical signals to individual brain cells that store information about lines, movements, colors, smells, and other sensory inputs.
Intelligent people know that all information gets into the brain through sensory pathways: gustatory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, auditory, and visual. Most linguistic, cultural, and physical learning is derived from the environment by observing or taking it in through the senses. To know a wine it must be drunk; to know a role it must be acted; to know a game it must be played; to know a dance it must be performed; to know a goal it must be envisioned. Those whose sensory pathways are open, alert, and acute absorb more information from the environment than those whose pathways are withered, immune, and oblivious to sensory stimuli.
The more regions of the brain that store data about a subject, the more interconnection there is. This redundancy means students will have more opportunities to pull up all those related bits of data from their multiple storage areas in response to a single cue. This cross-referencing of data strengthens the data into something that's learned rather than just memorized (Willis, 2007).
We are learning more and more about the impact of the arts and music on improved mental functioning. Forming mental images is important in mathematics and engineering; listening to classical music seems to improve spatial reasoning. Social scientists use scenarios and role playing; scientists build models; engineers use CAD-CAM; mechanics learn through hands-on experimentation; artists explore colors and textures; and musicians combine instrumental and vocal music.
Some students, however, go through school and life oblivious to the textures, rhythms, patterns, sounds, and colors around them. Sometimes children are afraid to touch things or get their hands dirty. Some don't want to feel an object that might be slimy or icky. They operate within a narrow range of sensory problem-solving strategies, wanting only to describe it but not illustrate or act it, or to listen but not participate.
The future is not some place we are going to but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.
—John Schaar, political scientist
All human beings have the capacity to generate novel, clever, or ingenious products, solutions, and techniques—if that capacity is developed (Sternberg, 2006). Creative human beings try to conceive solutions to problems differently, examining alternative possibilities from many angles. They tend to project themselves into different roles using analogies, starting with a vision and working backward, and imagining they are the object being considered. Creative people take risks and frequently push the boundaries of their perceived limits (Perkins, 1991). They are intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated, working on the task because of the aesthetic challenge rather than the material rewards.
Creative people are open to criticism. They hold up their products for others to judge, and they seek feedback in an ever-increasing effort to refine their technique. They are uneasy with the status quo. They constantly strive for greater fluency, elaboration, novelty, parsimony, simplicity, craftsmanship, perfection, beauty, harmony, and balance.
Students, however, often are heard saying "I can't draw," "I was never very good at art," "I can't sing a note," or "I'm not creative." Some people believe creative humans are just born that way and that genes and chromosomes are the determinants of creativity.
The most beautiful experience in the world is the experience of the mysterious.
—Albert Einstein
Describing the 200 best and brightest of USA Today's All USA College Academic Team, Tracey Wong Briggs (1999) states, "They are creative thinkers who have a passion for what they do." Efficacious people have not only an "I can" attitude but also an "I enjoy" feeling. They seek intriguing phenomena. They search for problems to solve for themselves and to submit to others. They delight in making up problems to solve on their own, and they so enjoy the challenge of problem solving that they seek perplexities and puzzles from others. They enjoy figuring things out by themselves, and they continue to learn throughout their lifetimes. One efficacious person is chemist Ahmed H. Zewail, a Nobel Prize winner, who said that he had a passion to understand fundamental processes: "I love molecules. I want to understand why do they do what they do" (Cole, 1999).
Some children and adults avoid problems and are turned off to learning. They make such comments as "I was never good at these brain teasers," "Go ask your father; he's the brain in this family," "It's boring," "When am I ever going to use this stuff," "Who cares," "Lighten up, teacher; thinking is hard work," or "I don't do thinking!" Many people never enrolled in another math class or other "hard" academic subject after they weren't required to in high school or college. Many people perceive thinking as hard work, and they recoil from situations that demand too much of it.
We want students to be curious, to commune with the world around them, to reflect on the changing formations of a cloud, to feel charmed by the opening of a bud, to sense the logical simplicity of mathematical order. Intelligent people find beauty in a sunset, intrigue in the geometric shapes of a spider web, and exhilaration in the iridescence of a hummingbird's wings. They marvel at the congruity and intricacies in the derivation of a mathematical formula, recognize the orderliness and adroitness of a chemical change, and commune with the serenity of a distant constellation. We want students to feel compelled, enthusiastic, and passionate about learning, inquiring, and mastering (Costa, 2007).
There has been a calculated risk in every stage of American development—the pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, businessmen who were not afraid of failure, dreamers who were not afraid of action.
—Brooks Atkinson
Risk takers seem to have an almost uncontrollable urge to go beyond established limits. They are uneasy about comfort; they live on the edge of their competence. They seem compelled to place themselves in situations in which they do not know what the outcome will be. They accept confusion, uncertainty, and the higher risks of failure as part of the normal process, and they learn to view setbacks as interesting, challenging, and growth producing. However, responsible risk takers do not behave impulsively. Their risks are educated. They draw on past knowledge, are thoughtful about consequences, and have a well-trained sense of what is appropriate. They know that all risks are not worth taking.
Risk takers can be considered in two categories: those who see the risk as a venture and those who see it as adventure. The venture part of risk taking might be described in terms of what a venture capitalist does. When a person is approached to take the risk of investing in a new business, she will look at the markets, see how well organized the ideas are, and study the economic projections. If she finally decides to take the risk, it is a well-considered one.
The adventure part of risk taking might be described by the experiences from Project Adventure. In this situation, there is a spontaneity, a willingness to take a chance in the moment. Once again, a person will take the chance only if experiences suggest that the action will not be life threatening or if he believes that group support will protect him from harm (e.g., checking out the dimensions of weight, distance, and strength of a bungee cord before agreeing to the exhilaration of a drop). Ultimately, people learn from such high-risk experiences that they are far more able to take actions than they previously believed. Risk taking becomes educated only through repeated experiences. It often is a cross between intuition, drawing on past knowledge, striving for precision and accuracy, and a sense of meeting new challenges.
Bobby Jindal, then executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, stated, "The only way to succeed is to be brave enough to risk failure" (Briggs, 1999, p. 2A). When people hold back from taking risks, they miss opportunities. Some students seem reluctant to take risks. They hold back from games, new learning, and new friendships because their fear of failure is far greater than their desire for venture or adventure. They are reinforced by the mental voice that says, "If you don't try it, you won't be wrong," or "If you try it and you are wrong, you will look stupid." The other voice that might say, "If you don't try it, you will never know," is trapped by fear and mistrust. These students are more interested in knowing whether their answer is correct or not than in being challenged by the process of finding the answer. They are unable to sustain a process of problem solving and finding the answer over time, and therefore they avoid ambiguous situations. They have a need for certainty rather than an inclination for doubt.
We hope that students will learn how to take intellectual as well as physical risks. Students who are capable of being different, going against the grain of common thinking, and thinking of new ideas (testing them with peers and teachers) are more likely to be successful in an age of innovation and uncertainty.
You can increase your brain power three to fivefold simply by laughing and having fun before working on a problem.
—Doug Hall
Why we laugh, no one really knows. Laughing is an instinct that can be traced to chimps, and it may reinforce our social status (Hubert, 2007). Humor is a human form of mutual playfulness. Beyond the fact that laughing is enjoyable, it may have medicinal value as well. Laughing, scientists have discovered, has positive effects on physiological functions: blood vessels relax, stress hormones disperse, and the immune system gets a boost, including a drop in the pulse rate. Laughter produces secretion of endorphins and increased oxygen in the blood. Humor has been found to have psychological benefits as well. It liberates creativity and provokes such higher-level thinking skills as anticipating, finding novel relationships, visual imaging, and making analogies. People who engage in the mystery of humor have the ability to perceive situations from an original and often interesting vantage point. They tend to initiate humor more often, to place greater value on having a sense of humor, to appreciate and understand others' humor, and to be verbally playful when interacting with others. Having a whimsical frame of mind, they thrive on finding incongruity; perceiving absurdities, ironies, and satire; finding discontinuities; and being able to laugh at situations and themselves.
Some students find humor in all the wrong places—human differences, ineptitude, injurious behavior, vulgarity, violence, and profanity. They employ laughter to humiliate others. They laugh at others yet are unable to laugh at themselves. We want students to acquire the habit of finding humor in a positive sense so they can distinguish between those situations of human frailty and fallibility that require compassion and those that truly are funny (Dyer, 1997).
Take care of each other. Share your energies with the group. No one must feel alone, cut off, for that is when you do not make it.
—Willie Unsoeld, mountain climber
Humans are social beings. We congregate in groups, find it therapeutic to be listened to, draw energy from one another, and seek reciprocity. In groups we contribute our time and energy to tasks that we would quickly tire of when working alone. In fact, solitary confinement is one of the cruelest forms of punishment that can be inflicted on an individual.
Collaborative humans realize that all of us together are more powerful, intellectually or physically, than any one individual. Probably the foremost disposition in our global society is the heightened ability to think in concert with others, to find ourselves increasingly more interdependent and sensitive to the needs of others. Problem solving has become so complex that no one person can go it alone. No one has access to all the data needed to make critical decisions; no one person can consider as many alternatives as several people.
Some students may not have learned to work in groups; they have underdeveloped social skills. They feel isolated, and they prefer solitude. They say things like "Leave me alone—I'll do it by myself," "They just don't like me," or "I want to be alone." Some students seem unable to contribute to group work and are job hogs; conversely, other students let all the others in a group do all the work.
Working in groups requires the ability to justify ideas and to test the feasibility of solution strategies on others. It also requires developing a willingness and an openness to accept feedback from a critical friend. Through this interaction, the group and the individual continue to grow. Listening, consensus seeking, giving up an idea to work with someone else's, empathy, compassion, group leadership, knowing how to support group efforts, altruism—all are behaviors indicative of cooperative human beings.
The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.
—John F. Kennedy
In a world that moves at warp speed, there is more to know today than ever before, and the challenge of knowing more and more in every succeeding day, week, month, and year ahead will only continue to expand exponentially. The quest for meaningful knowledge is critical and never ending.
Intelligent people are in a continuous learning mode. They are invigorated by the quest of lifelong learning. Their confidence, in combination with their inquisitiveness, allows them to constantly search for new and better ways. People with this Habit of Mind are always striving for improvement, growing, learning, and modifying and improving themselves. They seize problems, situations, tensions, conflicts, and circumstances as valuable opportunities to learn (Bateson, 2004).
A great mystery about humans is that many times we confront learning opportunities with fear rather than mystery and wonder. We seem to feel better when we know rather than when we learn. We defend our biases, beliefs, and storehouses of knowledge rather than invite the unknown, the creative, and the inspirational. Being certain and closed gives us comfort, whereas being doubtful and open gives us fear. As G. K. Chesterton so aptly expressed, "There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; there are only uninterested people."
Because of a curriculum employing fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness, students from an early age are trained to believe that deep learning means figuring out the truth rather than developing capabilities for effective and thoughtful action. They have been taught to value certainty rather than doubt, to give answers rather than to inquire, to know which choice is correct rather than to explore alternatives. Unfortunately, some adults are content with what they already believe and know. Their childlike curiosity has died. They exhibit little humility because they believe they are all knowing. They do not seek out or discover the wisdom of others. They do not know how or when to leverage a love of and lust for learning. As a result, they follow a path of little value and minimal opportunity.
Our wish is for creative students and people who are eager to learn. This Habit of Mind includes the humility of knowing that we don't know, which is the highest form of thinking we will ever learn. Paradoxically, unless we start off with humility, we will never get anywhere. As the first step, we must already have what eventually will be the crowning glory of all learning: to know—and to admit—that we don't know and to not be afraid to find out.
The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.
—B. B. King
The 16 Habits of Mind just described were drawn from research on human effectiveness, descriptions of remarkable performers, and analyses of the characteristics of efficacious people. These Habits of Mind can serve as mental disciplines. Students, parents, and teachers, when confronted with problematic situations, might habitually use one or more of these Habits of Mind by asking themselves, "What is the most intelligent thing I can do right now?" They also might consider these questions:
Community organizer Saul Alinsky coined a very useful slogan: "Don't just do something … stand there!" Taking a reflective stance in the midst of active problem solving is often difficult. For that reason, each of these Habits of Mind is situational and transitory. There is no such thing as perfect realization of any of them. They are utopian states toward which we constantly aspire. Csikszentmihalyi (1993) states, "Although every human brain is able to generate self-reflective consciousness, not everyone seems to use it equally" (p. 23). Few people, notes Kegan (1994), ever fully reach the stage of cognitive complexity, and rarely before middle age.
These Habits of Mind transcend all subject matters commonly taught in school. They are characteristic of peak performers in all places: homes, schools, athletic fields, organizations, the military, governments, churches, or corporations. They are what make marriages successful, learning continual, workplaces productive, and democracies enduring. The goal of education, therefore, should be to support others and ourselves in liberating, developing, and habituating these Habits of Mind more fully. Taken together, they are a force directing us toward increasingly authentic, congruent, and ethical behavior. They are the touchstones of integrity and the tools of disciplined choice making. They are the primary vehicles in the lifelong journey toward integration. They are the "right stuff" that make human beings efficacious.
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I think managing impulsivity is certainly one of the toughest challenges when it comes to teaching students. Students often act before they think which forces teachers to come up with solutions beforehand in advanced. Because teachers can anticipate what might happen with certain students, they have to condition them to think a certain way before any conflicts arises
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As a special educator, I learned about ABC (antecedent conditions, behavior, consequences). When you describe a teacher anticipating what may happen, you recognize that a teacher who can determine what the triggers are that cause the impulsivity has a “leg up.” I believe that anticipation requires careful observation of a student within the classroom context. Then you can determine how to modify the antecedents. By doing so, you will short circuit the impulsive behavior. I have seen teachers successfully teach students to use a meta-cognitive checklist (sometimes with visuals).
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I think the mixing of culture in the student population complicate the situation because each family has their own way of behaving and there is not much a teacher can do. We have to accept their culture.
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Hi Nile, Totally agreed! Impulsivity is very hard for students. i work in a High School and students just fight by impulsivity. After the fight is when they really realize that it was not necessary.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kimberly-Kirkpatrick-2/publication/284442951/figure/fig1/AS
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Como estudiante tambien soy conciente de que nosotros constantemente tenemos la impulsividad de gritar o sugerir lo primero que se nos viene a la mente pero también sabemos apreciar a los docentes que se toman el tiempo para crear actividades o estrategias que nos inciten a razonar antes de decir algo y tambien identificamos a los maestros que generalmente solo se centran en impartir un tema pero no lo imparten con el motivo de hacer mover nuestro proceso cognoscitivo.
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I think posing problems and questioning students is the perfect way for teachers to reassure that they’re re students are learning. When they’re asked to show their evidence to prove their source is accurate, it shows that they’re not just answering questions to complete a task but that they’re critical thinkers as well.
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I like when a teacher asks why because the answer to why shows how much the student is understanding.
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Keeping the mind busy is important due to the negativity that can breed from a mind full of TV static and nothingness.
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If we’re only confronted with what we know, we don’t gain any new skills, knowledge or insight.
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Here at NowComment, our Room 407 students have been engaging with Margaret Wheatley’s “Willing to Be Disturbed” pieces. I think that the Berry quote here brings us to this sort of disturbance/disruption of both routine. . .and perhaps policies. What is blocking our stream? And…is it a song or a dirge?
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I feel like all of us seniors can relate to this first line. After senior year, we will be making our own decisions almost completely for the most part. Until this point most of us rely on our parents for a whole lot. But now, it’s kind of up to us if we want to go to college, and where we would want to go if we decide to.
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I agree with Carter here that in this first line we can compare this to our own lives as we are all about to begin new journeys.
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I feel like as kids in High school we don’t really take the time to understand that our lives are actually about to start sooner than we think.
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I agree. Seniors dont really know that their adult life will start soon. These days they only think about brand names and having a good life without thinking that there time to be leaving for free is over.
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I agree after working with high school students this past school year they really aren’t prepared for what happens when they do not go back to their every year routine in September. A-lot of what I see is them coasting through senior year with a mindset that is kind of relaxed.
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I relate to this quote about the journey beginning when we don’t know which way to go because I have struggled in many decisions regarding college and I know that my life on my own will start soon, and that is the true journey.
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I can relate to this line of the poem as I find myself perplexed at times in my own coursework. It is then that I take my own inventory. Is the confusion a result of my level of engagement? What strategies might I employ to remedy the confusion? Is there a hole somewhere in my understanding that I can patch? But, I know that my confusion has a source as much as might enlightenment and understanding will have a place. How do I get to that place? It cannot be by abandonment. That would mean simply being stuck in place.
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“The mind that is not baffled is not employed” is a great quote that says if someone is not confused or tested they are not into the task at hand.
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Often times when times are tough, the easiest option is to give up or shut down. But when fighting through our struggles and obstacles we often become stronger and better people whether that be mentally, physically, or emotionally.
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It would be good to have an image as well attached to this description – instead of each Habit of Mind – I know this is a scholarly article – but this would also maybe appeal to students more with accompanying visuals
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I’m the Tech Liaison for the New York City Writing Project. I… (more)
I’m the Tech Liaison for the New York City Writing Project. I… (more)
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Yep saw these and these make the explanations more relatable – definitely enhance the meaning with the images that are provided!
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HOM are also a fun way to represent critical thinking when met with a difficult task. But putting it this way does create a sort of visual when tackling problems.
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Throughout this article Costa and Kallick describe in depth how essential it is that teachers are developing the learning power of students of all ages. In the article we see that both authors give a lot of concrete examples of how these learning dispositions have made a difference. These 16 habits presented to us are teaching kids, whether it is from their parents or teachers, habits that are performed by them on a day to day basis. The meaning behind this book is to help students get into the habit of behaving intelligently. A Habit of Mind is a pattern of intellectual behaviors that leads to productive actions. This is why we are trying to inform kids of these habits and consider what it means.
Finding some background information online, I noticed that their are four books in the ASCD ground-breaking Habits of Mind series. The volume we are discussing today presents a compelling case for why it’s more relevant than ever to align the missions of schools and classrooms to teaching students how to think and behave intelligently when they encounter problems and challenges in learning and in life. My thoughts behind the reading for the day is that all students of all ages should be learning and incorporating these 16 habits in their teachings.
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There are certain habits of mind and ways of thinking that our society traditionally values and rewards. However, I’ve lately been thinking and learning about neurodivergence and understanding this not as a deficit but as a different way of thinking. I have not yet had time to really think through whether these 16 habits encompass that divergence, but it is something I am attuned to. And, in general, I become uncomfortable with attempts to definite “intelligence” in very specific ways that don’t account for different kinds of intelligence. I appreciate that the habits of mind are trying to focus on an approach to learning rather than narrow, discrete skills or content. But I also find myself uneasy.
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I think this intro is very good at explaining what the habits of mind really entail.
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I would not expect these types of reading to have an overview of what is going to be read. I think it is very beneficial to know what is going to be read. It gives the read a gist of what they are getting into.
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Who gave them the name Habits of Mind and why are they named that? Could they have different names?
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I agree with the questions Ava is asking why is it called Habits of Mind? Do we have an answer why?
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habits of mind they are the character of the story.
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This sentences is defining ‘the habits of minds’ as the tool people use which help them think before act or react.
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I feel as though whether one is intelligent or not there can improvements on the way one reacts to a problem or situation. We all face problems in life. How we respond to those problems is what will closely define our character and the type of person we are. One does not have to be intelligent to respond in a respectful manner to an issue. It is very important although, for all people to understand and study these habits of mind. For we can all advance alongside one another and become more mindful and educated people.
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I love this quote- to me, it lets me and students know, they can do amazing things when they might feel they are lost, instead of feeling and despair, if we can train our minds to “roll with it” and see where we can take ourselves when we find ourselves not exactly where we expected to be, but also, teachers have to be willing to let students possibly end up with a different meaning of topics as well if they see students interpreting things differently than they imagined.
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The meaning I took from this portion of the Wendell Berry quote was if you are not confused, your mind is not working hard enough. If you think things are simple you are missing the complexity of life and its content. I made a text-to-text connection to this portion of the quote. We recently did and assignment over Wheatley Essays. One article titled “Willing to be Disturbed” and the other titled “The Works: Your Source to Being Fully Alive, Summer 2000”. These articles explain how opening up your mind to other peoples opinions can make your opinion richer or possibly change your viewpoint. This potion of the quote summarizes those articles perfectly. Everything is worth exploring whether it be someone else opinion of the complexity you find within life. Don’t be satisfied with the opinions and thoughts you have now, go out and find a source to challenge those thoughts and make your brain wonder.
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Habits of the mind are usually performed together in groups and almost never alone. Kind of like multitasking.
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Several habits of mind occur at the same time without us even knowing. This simply goes to show just how powerful the mind truly is, even when we are not cognizant of it.
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To add on to what Lucas was saying I agree. It is weird to think how your mind takes over without you even noticing. It happens over habit.
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It is interesting that everything we do is an actual habit. I do not think anyone anyone ever thinks like that. It gives you something to think about.
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I love this sentence because in this there is emphasis on the need for us to listen and allow for our minds to come up with dialog that has to do with asking questions or thinking higher in order to take in information and reciprocate
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I think the temptation is at times to take an itemized list and then work them separately. Quite possibilty assign or assess for them separately. These habits in synthesis allow for a little more room to talk about our employment/engagement of the Habit.
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Diving into the habits of mind is interesting to learn about. The Habits of Mind would be beneficial for future speeches/public presentations
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Habits of mind can be applied to every situation in life, but being able to use multiple or connect them creates a much more powerful tool.
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One characteristic of many (not all) autistic people is rigid thinking. But, they also tend to think and communicate with clarity and precision. Non-autistic people might respond to this clarity and precision by saying that they are not being flexible. So, in this scenario, these two habits of mind might be in contradiction. And it might be that an individual may possess one to a greater degree than, and possibly at the expense of, the other. Rather than looking at these as attributes every individual must possess, it might be helpful to see them as contributions individuals make to a greater whole.
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Listening intently is the first step to more intelligent thinking. Before we can form our own thoughts and opinions, we must shape them through the concepts we listen to all around us.
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As the introduction of Habits of Mind continues, the author begins to open up about the perhaps the comparison of listening intently vs not intently. As he quotes about what happens when we listen intently, I fully agree with Costa. I have noticed within my own life and experiences that if I say something to someone then they have a different response when listening intently or not. If we are listening intently we can open up to these habits of mind more and be able to respond in the most effect way. Listening intently is very important for effective communication.
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its interesting that the habits of mind can be used together almost like multitasking for you thoughts
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This is a simple comment, though one i feel justified making. It’s all too common now a days for people to claim their research to be absolute. This small sentence works nicely to show that we are still learning and that it’s okay, and even encouraged for research like this to change and evolve.
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I like this paragraph because it reassures me that the habits of my mind do not have to fit into this list of 16. It leaves room for expansion and an even deeper understanding of our habits of mind.
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To assume that there are only 16 habits of mind is something that I along with assumingly some of my classmates likely inferred based off of the list that was presented to us. However, when thinking of these 16 habits of mind it makes senses that one may find themselves not relating specifically to any one habit.
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I feel that humans display intelligence in different ways depending on the person, and that there is no way that there are only 16 ways to display it. Some people may be good with “traditional” intelligence, but others may have more common sense.
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There are many ways to display intelligence, yes. I feel that a lot of younger students struggle with this, as they think their intelligence is defined by test grades and report cards. This sometime dictates a student’s success until they find the right concepts to apply their intelligence to.
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It is shocking to see the list of habits increase dramatically. It makes me wonder how habits are found and who decides that they are habits?
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I thought this was interesting as well. The habits of mind will never be complete because we all learn differently. Maybe they are increasing based on technology?
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I don’t think the habits of minds list will every be complete because we all think differently and the way we think will continue to develop.
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I feel like this sentence was a great addition to the intro as it says that we are always allowed to add and expand to the habits of mind.
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As the Arthur L. Costa explains the initial data to this list began in 1991. At the time the list was minimal, at only 12 habits of mind. However, as a society we have grown and found new possibilities and expanded this list to 16. I feel as though the Habits of Mind list can be continued as we continue studying and abiding by the current terms on the list. We may be able to find truth in one habit of mind to lead to a new discovery. In order to keep advancing, we must be optimistic to new advances and new opportunity of growth for the future of Habits of Mind. I feel as though my class should come together with the common goal to present one, or possibly two, new Habits of Mind to add to the list.
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The line about adding to the list of habits of mind interests me because there is so many out there. It would take a lot of time and thought to expand this list to its full potential. We can explore them in the classroom but it seems like our work would almost never be done.
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I agree with what Sydney is saying it is interesting because there are already so many. How are they going to go into more detail and try to add more.
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This is a list of 16 habits of mine, but even 16 is not enough to cover them all. This sentence tells the reader to continue to search for more and learn what else could fit into this list.
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Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision.
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In order to be able to teach our students how to behave when they don’t have the answer to something, how to get them produce a response based on prior knowledge, or helping them develop, process, learn, and imitate a critical response either on their own or from others view.
The habit of the mind focuses on finding cues to our responses when facing situations people do not have the answer to.
In my opinion, there are important factors we must deal with prior to confronting an awkward situation where we are at lost due to lack of knowledge.
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Traditional setting for learning is slowly but surely giving way to new modes of learning that incorporates different learning styles. This is not to say any negative of traditional setting I definitely see the need to enhance what previously obtained finding new ways to do reach similar . The previous year has shown this even clearly as virtual classroom took over every level of learning.
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I agree, higher thinking involves several things happening at the same time!
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Having a motivating behavior allows the person or student to develop better in the company.
The nature of people and their integral development in an organizational or educational environment can be better understood through four basic assumptions: individual differences, the person as a whole, motivated behavior and the value of the person (human dignity). By considering these principles, it is possible to create an environment in which people not only develop professionally, but also flourish in a personal and human sense.
Each person is unique, with a particular set of skills, experiences, and perspectives. Recognizing and valuing these individual differences is crucial to fostering an inclusive and respectful environment. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach, organizations and educational institutions must customize their strategies to support the development of each individual. This not only boosts performance, but also promotes creativity and innovation, as diverse perspectives can lead to more robust and effective solutions.
Seeing the person as a whole being implies recognizing that their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are interconnected. Instead of focusing solely on professional or academic aspects, it is essential to consider the emotional and psychological well-being of each individual. By creating an environment that supports mental and emotional health, people are better equipped to manage stress, maintain motivation, and achieve higher performance in all areas of their life. Wellness programs, personal development activities and a healthy work-life balance are essential to address this holistic approach.
Motivation is a key factor in human behavior. People are more likely to push themselves and overcome obstacles when they are intrinsically motivated. This means that organizations should focus on fostering a sense of purpose and connection to work or study. Intrinsic motivation arises when people find meaning in what they do, feel competent, and have autonomy. Creating an environment that supports these aspects can include offering opportunities for growth, recognizing and celebrating achievements, and providing an appropriate degree of freedom so that people can make decisions and be creative in their work.
Value of the person (human dignity): Respecting and valuing human dignity involves treating each individual with respect and consideration. This translates into policies and practices that promote equity, justice and inclusion. People should feel valued not only for their specific contributions, but for their intrinsic value as human beings. A work or educational environment that prioritizes human dignity fosters relationships of trust and mutual respect, which in turn strengthens group cohesion and the sense of belonging.
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Well, according to the previous text, it is important to know what a person is, the type of person that exists, since we interact day by day but without having the concept well defined and in this way the comment breaks down the topic in more depth.
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OK, so what I am hearing is that the Habits of Mind are ways of behaving that help us create knowledge and thinking flexibly in response to questions and problems that don’t have immediate answers. This means being able to take a critical stance and look at our work from different perspectives; being able to ask questions, edit, and learn from other people. So basically, we’re not just trying to remember information but trying to use information to make decisions and act on it. It’s an important skill to have in order to become an intelligent, critical thinker.
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In this sentence, it talks about a traditional setting in school. It is hard to imagine what this traditional setting would look like because we have gone so long now with seeing people through a screen or classrooms being empty. I would love to see a traditional setting again where everyone is together and not just through a screen but I do not know if this will happen before I graduate.
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nostalgia: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
When I think of “traditional school” I reminisce about better days. Ciara, I believe you are right, I don’t think traditional will ever be the same. At least before we are long gone.
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I think I speak for everyone when I say I’m sick of it, but that doesn’t need to be said, we all know. I do believe though, that in some nonsensical roundabout way, that this will eventually help the educational system and its flaws. School never feels like learning, it feels like someone cramming a book down your throat and expecting you to understand its contents. I think Covid outlining kids use of cheating, not turning in assignments, not showing up to class really shows just how much the public school system has messed up. Recognizing these flaws we can eventually change our production line style education into something more productive.
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I think the way you just worded this is perfect. Even though Covid has messed a lot of things up I think it has helped not only helped show how students act under pressure, but it also shows the schools and teachers what their students home life is like.
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Why is it called a traditional setting? Is that just what we have done for the past so many years or what? Not everyone had access to education until a little bit ago.
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It baffles me that in my journey to become an ELA teacher, we are constantly being preached to about how we need to change education from rote memorization into a way to develop critical thinkers and life-long learners, yet this is not typically reflected in how we, the educators, are assessed. I recently took the CST for ELA and was dumbfounded at the number of questions that relied upon whether I had read this author or that author. Everyone has specialty knowledge and also knowledge gaps, and I was stunned that one might be denied the opportunity to become an English teacher if they had not read Salman Rushdie or Dostoyevsky, even if they were extremely knowledgeable in other works. Yes, of course we need to work to fix this idolization of Jeopardy-style knowledge for our students, but can we fix the way we evaluate our teachers as well? Can we practice what we teach?
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This not knowing is not celebrated but rather met with consequence (usually detrimental and/or dire). Cruz’s book focuses upon the origins of mistakes and how to claim/own/address/move.
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When A person does not know an answer, they turn to a learning tactic they’re comfortable and familiar with in order to get the question answered. This tactic that they are familiar with is going to be the one they used the most. This is the building blocks for the HoM.
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I think this is funny to think about. Getting flustered and looking all around the room and through all of your papers to try and find the answer and you can feel your face getting red and all of your classmates eyes on you.
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This is important. I’ve often observed my students floundering and not knowing how to overcome a hurdles, rather expecting to have the answer ready-made and given to them. But that’s not how intellectual or practical challenges typically work.
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I always thought it was interesting how students processed certain questions that they didn’t know the answer too, if you look around the room there will be several students doing something different to get their answer.
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This is very good information to know so we can play to our Habits of Mind when tasked with something difficult.
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This makes me wonder if there are certain habits of mind that are better in these situations or if it ultimately depends on the person and what works best for them
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Replicate to Create.
Inculcation to Innovation.
Rote to Rendered.
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This sentence relates heavily to today’s schooling system as a whole. Many students succeed within school because they can simply remember a subject for a test, but then forget about it right after. This method for learning seems to be encouraged by the schooling system, but it provides no true benefits to its students.
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Students need to be able to understand what is going in thier brain and grasp the meaning of it. Do not jut collect info and forget about it. Collect info and understand the meaning of it.
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This line refers to producing knowledge as coming up with something on your own. It refers to reproducing knowledge as simply remembering something said to you or something you had to memorize. When testing for habits of mind, they test of knowledge students must come up with themselves (produce) instead of things they remember from recent assignments or tests (reproduce).
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Habits of Mind is wanting to help students find a ‘critical stance’ within their work. While reading this, ‘flexibility’ caught my eye. Within this past year, our school has been forced to go online a number of times, so of course students are having to be flexible with their work, but this is not what I wanted to talk about. If teachers and the school would be more flexible with their work and not so much on turning things in on time, I would feel so much more obliged to do my work. But instead, I am on a time limit every single day balancing my school work, my job, and my mental health which overall has not been the best this past year. ‘Learning from another’s prospective’ caught my eye as well. Not everyone has a stable environment to be continuously sit at a desk and pump work out for a due date the following night. Again, this pulls into flexibility. If we were able to turn assignments in at our own pace and was more lenient with their students, I feel as that building a stance with my mind and work would be easier.
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I love this quote because I agree with it 100%. Intelligence is great in itself, but we have to know how to apply it in our everyday lives. What good is it to have information and then not use it? If you learn something share it, form an opinion, and act accordingly.
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this sentence presents the idea that studying and reviewing the habits of mind may teach some students different ways in which they can act on information that they have. It provides suggestions and options for those who may be confused.
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I like this quote. It makes me think about the old saying “knowledge is power”, but that is only true if you know what to do with it.
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Many people have great ideas and a lot of knowledge but not been taught how to act on it.
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I think this is very important, being able to know how to use information obtained.
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I will be using this in my reflection of this article.
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What do the others do to achieve or to settle into some degree of comfort with the challenges presented to us each and every day? Inside or outside of school?
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I will be using this in my reflection
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This will be added to my reflection because I think it gives a bunch of information which means it will easier to figure things out.
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as seen within this sentences to author makes a relation to intelligence to careers that require a college diploma.
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The speaker submits to us that people with certain qualities are often attributed with being successful. But I’d like to point out the differences with what is a widely held standard of success, and what is small, but equally as impactful, personal success. There is no quantifying success. To do so only succeeds in alienating individuals and creating biased imagery of success.
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It has been such a misconception for many years now that one must go to school and college in order to be intelligent and successful. As seen within this sentences to author makes a relation to intelligence to careers that require a college diploma. However, this reasoning has been found to be misconstrued, since many individuals have the ability to be intelligent in many aspects of life, rather than simple school subjects.
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To a degree, classrooms and the actual structure of classes need to revamped to help stop resisting against a new model of education. In having lessons and units focused around the concepts, principles, etc that are still unknown, it would be interesting how education could be giving more unknowns than known material and find connections and ways to bring an understanding to those topics that have been largely unknown. When I was in Mexico, the culture there allowed me to write, reflect, and ponder much more thoroughly because there was not an inherent push to rush as fast and accurately as possible. The culture of thinking critically was approached differently than in the U.S., and the same can be said of realizing the proper educational environment needs to allow for a huge shift of emphasis to achieve such a shift and change in the approach of the environment, students are learning in.
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What is it about these characteristics make these successful people successful?
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By encouraging students to determine which habits they can apply to themselves can help them to recognize the kind of work they do and are capable of. BY defining them to a specific habit they are able to concentrate to that habit ti helping them.
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It kind of intimidates me at how fast someone can pick up a habit. If it’s a good and healthy habit, it’s a great thing. Although more often than not, I feel as though one can pick up on the unhealthy habits easier. It makes me thing of softball. I can accidently pick up a bad batting habit and when I go to lessons, my coach will call me out for it. We’d end up taking weeks just to try to lessen the affects of this new habit.
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Horace Mann was a Massachusetts educator in the 1800s, who was an enthusiastic supporter of public education. Mann would serve as both Secretary of Education for Massachusetts, along with being a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
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Horace Mann took these habits of mind and helped share and apply them to not only his life but in the public education system to which he was a great supporter of.
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When Horace Mann said the “habit is a cable,” i believe him. Habits are one of the hardest things to break and and it takes a strong minded person to break them. One of my habits is shaking my leg up and down when i am sitting. If i focus on it, I can stop it, otherwise it always happens.
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Each situation in which our minds behave intelligently in order to work towards an answer builds upon one another. This allows us to utilize a vast majority of these situations to think critically when more evolved circumstances arise later in life.
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This is a metaphor. This is a direct correlation to the point I made in my 200-300 word prompt with which I said my awe of the world leads to me making metaphors and using those metaphors as “spice” in most of my work.
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The operative word here seems to be a pattern vs. a part of the set.
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Providing the definition is very useful so I can understand what the author is speaking about in the following text.
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When these kinds of situations occur, we go back to our personal “habits of mind.” Although these are personal, most of us probably learned these ways of thinking from someone else. These behaviors were most likely a reflection of what we have seen others do in our lives.
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I feel that it is quite self-explanatory that results of using learning techniques that work for you would result in higher quality work.
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How is it that we can use the Habits of Mind in our everyday life?
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I think the first step to applying HOM to our everyday life is to learn them all. Once we know them in depth we can start to execute each one slowly to be able to feel and see the outcome.
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Each individual has a habit of mind that they personally can relate to. The behaviors and mode of actions we take indicate to the habits of mind that we each mind the most useful in our lives.
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Recently, I read about the correct way to apply the CCL in the classroom and the skills needed for a student to applied and are very demanding. For example, in my 3-k program I let the children to use the blocks to crate what they please and I notice them getting angry when a tower they are constructing fall and the go back to erect the tower again, This is a sign of persisting in a task. I think that if the students knows some elements of the habits of mind, he/she would master the standard. Therefore, it will be a great deal if today teachers start using habits of mind to teach the children how have author control keeping in task and think clinically. The persisting in a task, thinking flexible, thinking about thinking, and striving for accuracy, and questioning and posing problem are skills a student must be able to use in solving mathematics problems.
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I believe the answer to your first question is experience. This can work for productive or non productive habits of mind. For example a kid hitting another child to get a toy, it worked before so it should work again. A more mature example would be someone properly communicating their plans for a large project to a potential backer, if they explain their intentions clearly like they did with the last one they should get the same desired outcome.
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The text basically states that by incorporating these Habits of Mind in your everyday life, many benefits will come from it.
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Having the Habits of Mind become habitual can help lead to a beneficial aspect in one’s day to day life. Without the Habits of Mind, a person would be restricted from intellectual behaviors.
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If these intellectual behaviors are habits, then we really cannot choose when or not to use them. A habit is something that someone does without really realizing, because it is so common in their lives. Most of us cannot “choose” when to pursue these behaviors that we call habits.
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An individual must pay attention to context clues, not simply just try an deploy a HOM. This could lead to using the wrong habit at an inappropriate time.
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We must skillfully apply these prior building blocks, or familiar situations, to help solve problems when they arise. Simply experiencing a similar situation at a previous occurrence is not enough, hence the reason it all depends on how we behave “intelligently.”
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So much to say about the potential power and impact of reflection in the secondary classroom. Whole group. Individual. Teacher and student.
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Our students are preparing to draft a larger paper in the next few days. I’ve included the Habits of Mind as an attachment to their work folder. We’ll be using these as a means of reflection into the paper and out of the product.
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This sentence gives note to the importance of experiencing something first hand can have on an individuals potential future decisions and behaviors.
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Many people struggle with finding their “why”, or finding what inclines them to produce good work. Many people are inclined to impress people, and overcoming this can help them produce more authentic work because it is more for YOU rather than for an audience.
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For me, I feel like of the 6 dimensions, the one I struggle with the most is Commitment.
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What do I do when the school values and the the family values differ?
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Como esta escrito en el documento “Capacidad: Poseer las habilidades y capacidades para llevar a cabo las conductas” es de suma importancia que se cuente con las capacidades necesarias si es que quieres desenvolverte correctamente en el area que hayas escogido, ya que si no cuentas con las habilidades necesarias para hacerlo tendras muchas complicaciones, sin embargo esto se puede evitar experimentando hasta llegar a una actividad en la que te desenvuelvas bien y cumplas con los resultados estimados, en conclusión Las capacidades son fundamentales en a vida de un ser humano y nos serán de mucha ayuda si las sabemos aprovechar correctamente
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I’m the Tech Liaison for the New York City Writing Project. I… (more)
I’m the Tech Liaison for the New York City Writing Project. I… (more)
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As stated in the document “Capacity: Possessing the abilities and capacities to carry out behaviors” it is of utmost importance to have the necessary capabilities if you want to develop correctly in the area you have chosen, since if you do not have the necessary skills to do so you will have many complications, however this can be avoided by experimenting until A activity in which you feel comfortable and fulfill the estimated results, in conclusion, capacities are essential in a human being’s life and they will be of great help if we know how to take advantage of them correctly.
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