This document discusses the concept of "habits of mind" and their importance in curriculum design. It provides examples of habits of mind from different subject areas like science, mathematics, social studies and more. Some key points made are: 1. Habits of mind emphasize attitudes, character traits and dispositions in addition to cognitive skills. 2. Explicitly teaching habits of mind builds background knowledge and gives students a sense of how disciplines are practiced. 3. Developing strong habits of mind requires opportunities for practice, modeling, and reflection over time. 4. Organizing curriculum around key habits of mind can improve thinking and learning outcomes.

1. Habits of Mind …
Another perspective on
curriculum design

2. Habits of Mind…
 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

3. Habits of Mind…
 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

4. Habits of Mind…
 … 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

5. Another perspective

6. New term for old concepts
 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)

7. So why teach habits …?
 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

8. So why teach habits …?
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)

9. So why teach habits …?
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)

10. So why teach habits …?
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)

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

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

13. Habits of critical thinkers
1. Respect for reasons 1. Respect for others
and truth in group inquiry and
2. Respect for high- deliberation
quality products and 2. Respect for
performances legitimate
3. Inquiring attitude intellectual authority
4. Open-mindedness 3. Intellectual work
ethic
5. Fair-mindedness
6. Independent-
mindedness
Bailins, Case, Coombs, and Daniels, Conceptualizing Critical Thinking

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

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

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

17. Science habits of mind
1. Curiosity
2. Openness
3. 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.
4. 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.

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

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

20. Habits in the curriculum …
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)

21. Habits in the curriculum …

22. Habits in the curriculum …
In considering habits, Goldenberg proposes …
2) 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
3) What special contributions to that thinking can my
discipline make?
a. What knowledge and skills from my discipline best help to
deliver the message about thinking?
b. What might best convey the flavor of my discipline?
c. What might be the most broadly useful to students?

23. Habits in the curriculum …
Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and
at last we cannot break it.
Horace Mann

24. Habits in the curriculum …
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

25. Habits in the curriculum …
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”

26. Thinking Occasions
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.

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

28. Modeling …
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

29. 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