Chapter 6. Dimension 5: Productive Habits of ...

A Different Kind of Classroom: Teaching with Dimensions of Learning
by Robert J. Marzano

We cannot learn (or teach) everything there is to know. Even if we could, we would probably quickly forget it, because human beings tend to forget information they don‘t use (Wickelgren 1979). For example, during my tenure as a professor at a university, I taught graduate courses in techniques for reading diagnosis. Although it was a complex field, I felt I had a certain mastery of the content and even wrote a textbook on the subject. After not using that information for a decade, though, I was embarrassed recently when I could not answer a simple question on the topic. I had to look up the information in the textbook I had helped write.

Acquiring content knowledge is very important, but perhaps it should not be the most important goal of the education process. Ultimately, it might be better to help students develop mental habits that will help them learn on their own whatever they need or want to know. To explore this idea, let‘s consider Mr. Nachtigal‘s class.

Mr. Nachtigal‘s Class

When students in Mr. Nachtigal‘s Advanced Placement calculus class talk to students from other classes, they find there are some significant differences between how Mr. Nachtigal runs his class and how other teachers run theirs. The most striking difference is that he doesn‘t emphasize getting the right answer as much as he emphasizes things like "trying to be accurate in what you do" and "hanging in even when answers aren‘t immediately apparent." It‘s not that he doesn‘t care about students‘ getting the right answer. It‘s just that he thinks you can learn almost anything if you‘ve learned to discipline your mind in certain ways.

Mr. Nachtigal introduced this idea the first day of class by giving an unusual speech: "Let‘s get a few things straight. Your job in this class is to learn. My job is to teach—but not just calculus. My job is to teach you to be good learners, to teach you to be the best you can be." He went on to tell a story about a friend named Dan King with whom he had graduated from college. When Dan was a junior in college, he said that someday he was going to get a Ph.D. in mathematics. His father was a mathematician at the university and he wanted to follow in his footsteps. Dan wasn‘t terrifically smart but he was very determined. His plans to go to graduate school were interrupted, however, by the war in Vietnam. Dan enlisted and ended up in the special forces. Two weeks before he was to come home, a grenade exploded close by. Dan was blinded.

Mr. Nachtigal saw Dan about a year after he got back to the United States. When he asked Dan what he was going to do, Dan‘s answer surprised him: "I‘m going to get my Ph.D. in mathematics." Mr. Nachtigal didn‘t say anything, but his immediate reaction was that Dan was setting himself up for a great disappointment. "Math is such a visual subject," he thought. "There‘s no way he could do such abstract work with his disability." Four years later, with tears in his eyes, Mr. Nachtigal sat through a graduation ceremony and watched Dan receive his Ph.D. in mathematics.

When Mr. Nachtigal asked his students, "How do you think he did it?" one student yelled out, "Guts!" Mr. Nachtigal said, "You‘re right, but it wasn‘t just that." What ensued was a fairly long discussion about how people accomplish things in the face of adversity. The class even identified some specific things Dan had probably done:

• Made a plan

• Used his resources

• Changed what he was doing when things weren‘t working out

• Hung in when the going got tough

• Trusted his own ideas and abilities

• Got people to help him

 

When the list was completed, Mr. Nachtigal said, "This is what is important to me. Not just calculus. This is what we‘re going to practice in here."

Mr. Nachtigal‘s story about Dan King was meant to be inspiring to students. It is a true story. Dan King was a friend of mine in graduate school. He was and is an inspiration to many people, but more important, he dramatically illustrates the power of cultivating specific habits of mind. Dan did not succeed simply because he had a great desire to succeed. Certainly this was necessary to overcome the tremendous obstacles confronting him, but Dan was using what some people call "dispositions of mind" and what the Dimensions of Learning model refers to as "productive habits of mind."

Self-Regulated Thinking and Learning

If you page through a few of the popular "how-to-succeed" books, you‘ll see that virtually all of them talk about developing good mental habits. For example, Stephen Corey‘s best-selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1990) attributes success to seven specific mental habits. On the more academic side, theorists such as Flavell (1976, 1977)) and Brown (1978, 1980) assert that certain mental habits, such as those below, render one‘s thinking and actions more self-regulated:

• Being aware of your own thinking

• Planning

• Being aware of necessary resources

• Being sensitive to feedback

• Evaluating the effectiveness of your actions

To illustrate, a student might develop a specific plan for an upcoming classroom project. Part of this plan would include identifying necessary resources and establishing milestones. As the student executes the plan, he might occasionally note whether he is getting closer to or further away from his goal and then make corrections as needed.

Critical Thinking and Learning

According to Ennis (1985, 1987, 1989) and Paul and his colleagues (1986, 1989), other mental habits make one‘s learning more critical in nature:

• Being accurate and seeking accuracy

• Being clear and seeking clarity

• Being open-minded

• Restraining impulsivity

• Taking a position when the situation warrants it

• Being sensitive to others‘ feelings and level of knowledge

For example, a student might notice that she tends to make bold assertions about topics she‘s unfamiliar with; as a result, she might decide to begin trying to think about what evidence she has for her position before she speaks. Another student might consciously strive to communicate in a clear fashion, checking to see whether others have understood his communication. It is important to note that the mental habits listed above are not the only aspects of critical thinking. In fact, combining the lists of Paul and Ennis would produce a list of more than twenty mental habits of critical thinking. Additionally, they both list critical thinking "skills and abilities" that include virtually all of the extending and refining activities listed in Chapter 4 of this book. Critical thinking, then, involves a variety of components interacting in complex ways. At the apex of critical thinking, however, is the use of the mental habits described above.

Creative Thinking and Learning

A somewhat different set of dispositions characterizes creativity, another valued form of thinking. According to Amabile (1983) and Perkins (1984, 1985, 1988), creative thinking involves the following mental habits:

• Engaging intensely in tasks even when answers or solutions are not immediately apparent.

• Pushing the limits of your knowledge and abilities.

• Generating, trusting, and maintaining your own standards of evaluation.

• Generating new ways of viewing a situation outside the boundaries of standard conventions.

For instance, a student might notice that she tends to coast through projects, using as little energy as possible. To correct this tendency, she might consciously "push" herself on a project, striving to do the very best she can. She might establish her own standards for a project, even if these vary from more commonly accepted standards. She might also try to see things in ways that are not commonly accepted.

Like critical thinking, creative thinking includes more than the mental habits listed here. Using an activity like abstracting to extend and refine knowledge is also a form of creative thinking. Again, though, at the core of creative thinking are the above mental habits.

The mental habits of self-regulation, critical thinking, and creative thinking permeate virtually every academic task students undertake. Being, or not being, self-regulated, critical, and creative affects how well students acquire and integrate knowledge. Being, or not being, self-regulated, critical, and creative affects how well students extend and refine knowledge. And it affects how well they make use of their knowledge. To this extent, the habits of mind are like attitudes and perceptions (Dimension 1): when they are negative or weak, they hamper students‘ ability to learn; when they are positive or strong, they improve students‘ ability to learn. This is why Dimensions 1 and 5 are depicted as the backdrop for Dimensions 2, 3, and 4 in the Dimensions of Learning diagram in Figure 6.1. Without attention to Dimensions 1 and 5, little effective learning occurs in Dimensions 2, 3, and 4.

Helping Students Develop and Maintain Effective Habits of Mind

The process of helping students develop effective habits of mind is qualitatively different from the processes of helping students develop any of the other dimensions of learning. Unlike positive attitudes and perceptions (Dimension 1), which can be reinforced in a fairly unobtrusive manner by the teacher, the habits of mind must be overtly taught and reinforced. But they do not lend themselves to instruction in explicit strategies as do Dimensions 2, 3, and 4. Rather, the habits of mind must be introduced and then reinforced as they are exhibited.

The habits of mind must be introduced to students because students rarely see these habits of mind being used in the world around them. Few people plan and manage resources well. Few people seek clarity or accuracy. Few people work at the edge, rather than the center, of their competence. In fact, it is rather remarkable how infrequently human beings use these mental habits. After describing some of the dire consequences of ignoring these mental habits, Gilovich (1991) says, "As individuals and as a society, we should be less accepting of superstition and sloppy thinking and should strive to develop those `habits of mind‘ that promote a more accurate view of the world" (p. 6).

There are, however, some striking examples of the use of these mental habits that teachers can employ in the classroom. I have seen teachers use specific events from the lives of Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, George Bush, and others to illustrate one or more of the mental habits. This is what Mr. Nachtigal was doing by relating the story of Dan King: providing students with a real-life example of some of the mental habits. In fact, using stories and literature is probably one of the most popular ways of demonstrating the habits of mind. As Bloome (1991) explains, literature and stories are a society‘s way of passing on the important values of a culture.

I once observed a very powerful demonstration of how literature can be used to introduce some of the mental habits. The teacher was reading The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O‘Dell to her 4th grade students. The book is about a young Indian girl named Karana who with her little brother is left on an island off the coast of California when the tribe leaves to avoid a hostile rival tribe. Soon her brother is killed by a pack of wild dogs and Karana must fend for herself for many years. While waiting to be rescued, she builds a house, makes weapons and utensils, finds and preserves food, and eventually adopts the leader of the dog pack, who protects her in a variety of situations. As the teacher read the story, she would periodically stop and ask students to identify the things they admired about Karana and the things that made her successful.

By the time the teacher had finished the book, students had generated a list of nearly thirty characteristics. As I recall, virtually all of the habits of mind described in this chapter, or variations of them, had been identified: Karana had made plans, she had been aware of resources, she had set her own standards, and so on. The teacher then highlighted the habits of mind that were to be the focus for the year. Although this lesson had taken some time and energy, it was a very powerful way of introducing specific habits of mind.

Once students have a basic awareness of the mental habits, the teacher can ask them to find examples among people they know. For example, in a 7th grade classroom in which the teacher had asked students to find examples of people using the mental habit of "hanging in there when answers and solutions aren‘t apparent," one student returned the next day with a story about how her brother had used that mental habit while trying to make the football team. Another girl told about how her father tried for more than two years to invent a new type of battery, persevering until he finally succeeded.

Another important aspect of introducing students to the habits of mind is asking them to identify specific situations in which each might be useful. Students from a variety of grade levels generated the list of situations in Figure 6.2.

Figure 6.2. Students‘ Suggestions of Situations When the Habits of Mind Might Be Useful

Self-Regulation

• Being aware of your own thinking:

  • When you‘re not doing well on a task, being aware of your own thinking can help you figure out what you‘re doing wrong.

   

• Planning:

  • Any time you have to do something that takes a long time and is fairly complex-like completing assignments that take two weeks or even a semester.

   

• Being aware of necessary resources:

  • Any time you want to make or do something that requires resources. Not having the resources might put limits on what you can do.

   

• Being sensitive to feedback:

  • When you are doing something that is repetitious (e.g., doing a very long arithmetic problem), being sensitive to feedback helps prevent careless mistakes.

   

• Evaluating the effectiveness of your actions:

  • When you are doing something new or something you are not very good at, evaluating your actions helps you learn from your mistakes.

   

Reinforcement is important too. Teachers should reinforce positive instances of the mental habits. For example, a teacher might notice that a student has paid particular attention to the resources necessary to complete a task, and say to her, "Amina, you‘re doing a great job of collecting all the material you need before you begin working," thus reinforcing the self-regulatory habit of managing resources. Or a teacher might notice and acknowledge that a student was trying to be particularly accurate: "Bill, I noticed that you looked up the facts in the encyclopedia. Good. That‘s a great way of making sure you‘re accurate," reinforcing the critical-thinking habit of seeking accuracy.

For a more formal level of reinforcement, the teacher might use process observers, particularly with meaningful-use tasks (Dimension 4) that are performed in cooperative groups. In this case, one student in each group would be appointed to observe students‘ use of a specific mental habit. At the end of a class period, the process observer would report on what he observed. For example, he might say, "I saw Bill really trying even though he couldn‘t figure out the answer."

The Role of Personal Goals

Many of the habits of mind, especially those that relate to self-regulation, can be reinforced quite powerfully as students strive to achieve personal goals. The work in motivation by researchers and theorists like Schunk (1985, 1990) indicates that people are most motivated when they are pursuing personal goals, and it is when they are motivated that they are most likely to use productive habits of mind. In other words, it is when we are trying to accomplish a personal goal that we are most likely to have a need to plan, manage resources, seek accuracy, work at the edge rather than the center of our competence, and so on.

One of my favorite ways of illustrating this point is to relate a story about my son, Todd. Although not a terribly poor student in high school, Todd was certainly not at the top of his class. He took as few academic courses as possible, and his 3.00 GPA was essentially the result of A‘s in metal shop and phys ed and C‘s in mathematics and science. In the middle of his junior year, he announced that he was not going to go to college. His logic was that he was not academically oriented (which was true), did not like school (also true), and was talented in auto mechanics (true again). Being the second son of Italian immigrants who stressed education as the way to a better life, I was extremely upset. Of course, I gave many unsolicited speeches about the importance of going to college and the probable effect that not going would have on his life.

At some point during this traumatic period, Todd went to see Top Gun, a movie about a modern-day navy aviator. Immediately after seeing the movie, he announced that he wanted to be a fighter pilot. This discouraged me because I believed my son was setting unrealistic goals. A happy turn of events (from my perspective) occurred when my son announced that he was going to college, because "you have to have a college degree to be a fighter pilot." I thought that if I could get him into college under any pretense he would soon abandon the foolishness of trying to be a fighter pilot, given the academic rigors involved. Since Todd had not distinguished himself in science and mathematics in high school, how could he possibly master the advanced mathematics and science he‘d need to be a fighter pilot?

To my utter amazement, Todd attacked the science and mathematics courses in college with a fervor I had previously not witnessed in him. He made detailed plans about how to transfer from an open-enrollment community college (the only one he could get into) to one of the best engineering schools in the country. He managed his time and money at a level of detail that bordered on obsession. He strove for accuracy in all his academic classes and surely worked at the edge rather than the center of his competence every day. As I write this book, I can proudly report that Todd is about to graduate magna cum laude with a degree in aerospace engineering from the third best engineering school in the country. Recently, he was inducted into a prestigious engineering fraternity. And along the way he obtained his private pilot‘s license, receiving a score of 100 on the examination given by the Federal Aviation Administration (the first time in fifteen years anyone from our region received such a high score). Finally (and most important to Todd), he was one of only two candidates from the state accepted into the Aviator‘s Officer Candidate School of the United States Navy, which is the navy‘s first and biggest step to becoming a fighter pilot.

In short, when Todd identified and began actively pursuing a goal that truly excited him, he cultivated mental habits he had previously ignored. In retrospect, this makes perfect sense to me. The habits of mind described in this chapter all push against natural human tendencies. The vast majority of people commonly do not like to plan, manage resources, or attend to feedback because of the time and energy involved. We usually do not avoid impulsivity or seek accuracy and clarity because not doing so is easy. For similar reasons, we usually do not work at the edge rather than the center of our competence, persevere even when answers or solutions are not readily available, and so on. But we do use these mental habits (which I tend to think of as being at the apex of human thought) when we are striving for something we truly desire.

The implication of this principle is that students should be encouraged to set personal goals—goals that really "turn them on," as aviation did Todd—and then supported in their efforts to accomplish those goals. For example, at the beginning of the school year, students might be asked to identify what they would like to accomplish that year or that semester. Again, the key is to have students identify goals that truly excite them. A teacher, counselor, or some other trusted adult would meet with each student regularly to offer feedback, guidance, and support. This scenario may sound unrealistic, but it is not. It is precisely what takes place at Pioneer Elementary School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, under the direction of Principal Suzanne Lochran. At the beginning of each year, students identify specific academic and personal goals they would like to accomplish, and then they periodically receive feedback, guidance, and support from advisors in the school.

Personal goals are one of the most powerful human motivators. They are the source of a basic life energy. To ignore them within formal education is to ignore a potential tool for teaching productive habits of mind that will serve learners in all kinds of situations throughout life.

The Role of Structured Academic Problems

Another powerful tool for reinforcing many of the habits of mind, especially those dealing with critical and creative thinking, is academic problems. Academic problems are defined here as the well-structured types of problems students commonly encounter in mathematics, science, and logic. They also include the types of problems referred to as brainteasers, which have been made popular by Martin Gardner (1978, 1982). Below are two problems that would be considered academic problems in the Dimensions of Learning model. (The answers to these problems are at the end of this chapter on p. 152.)

Problem #1

Bob says to Jana, "I gave away half of my rock collection and half of a rock to Louie. Then I gave half of what was left and half a rock more to Joe. I was left with one rock. How many rocks did I start with?"

Problem #2

Ian starts up the mountain trail at 7:00 a.m. on Monday. He keeps walking at a steady pace and arrives at the top that night. He stays the night and starts back down the next morning at 7:00 a.m. This time he walks down the same trail at different speeds, sometimes walking very quickly, other times very slowly. He even stops to look at the scenery. He arrives back where he started at 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday. That night Ian runs into Devon, who tells him, "You know Ian, coming down the mountain you passed a spot at exactly the same time you passed it going up the mountain." Ian says, "No way! Coming down the mountain I walked at different speeds." But Devon was right. Explain why.

Academic problems like these have at least three characteristics that make them useful tools for reinforcing the habits of mind related to critical and creative thinking:

1. They are inherently engaging. One characteristic of academic problems is that they tend to "hook" people. Did you find yourself somewhat compelled to solve the sample problems after reading them? Did you turn to the end of the chapter to check the answers before continuing your reading? The human mind has a low tolerance for unanswered questions. Psychologists explain this phenomenon in terms of "closure." The concept of closure was used by Ebbinghaus as far back as 1897 to explain why human beings naturally fill in missing information. In 1953 Taylor used this principle to develop a "cloze test" to measure the readability of passages. Later, John Bormuth (1968) popularized the process in the field of reading diagnosis. The "cloze" test used in reading presents students with passages from which words have been systematically deleted. As students read these passages, the natural cognitive tendency to make sense of incomplete information quite literally compels them to fill in missing words. To illustrate, read the following sentence:

He went to the ___________ and bought a loaf of ________.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to read this sentence without mentally filling in the words store and bread, respectively. Our cognitive system is designed to make sense of incomplete information. The same system drives us to solve problems like those above, which are incomplete in that they are, at least on the surface, missing a plausible explanation. How can you give away half a rock? Why do you have to pass at least one spot on the way down the hill at the same time that you passed it on the way up? Because academic questions are cognitively incomplete, then, they are naturally motivating. Even students who say they don‘t like to solve them are usually compelled to at least try. For this reason, such problems are inherently engaging.

2. They are easily placed in the curriculum. Hunter (1976) has popularized the notion of "sponge activities," or "learning opportunities which sop up those precious moments of waiting time which otherwise would be lost" (Hunter 1976, p. 76). She says that sponge activities are to be used "whenever there is an unavoidable waiting period before a planned activity can start, or when students finish an assignment and have some time left over." I have seen teachers in grades K-12 use problems like the ones above to this end. For example, one middle school social studies teacher had a ready store of academic problems. Each day, the teacher would duplicate several of these problems. As students completed assignments or waited for class to begin, they would try to solve the two or three "problems of the day." Students usually approached the activity with enthusiasm, and as students were trying to solve the problems, the teacher would reinforce such dispositions as seeking accuracy and persevering even when answers and solutions are not immediately apparent.

Teachers can also use academic problems as "interactive bulletin boards." Suzanne Lochran, the principal at Pioneer Elementary School who has all of her students set academic and personal goals at the beginning of the year, also has large bulletin boards in the school hallways covered with problems like those in Figure 6.3. Different corridors throughout the school are dedicated to different types of problems, and problem types are changed on a regular basis. Each board has a pocket containing answers to the problems. As students pass through the hallways, they are encouraged to solve the various types of problems and then check their answers.

Using academic problems as sponge activities to promote reasoning is in keeping with the new standards of the National Council for the Teaching of Mathematics (NCTM). Specifically, NCTM (1989) has recommended that problem solving be used as a regular classroom activity to enhance students‘ reasoning ability and understanding of basic mathematical concepts. I would go even further and suggest that academic problem solving should permeate the school day in K-12 classrooms.

3. They are cognitively challenging. Rowe (1985) and others have shown that academic problem solving is one of the most complex of cognitive actions. Even the simplest of problems necessitates the use of such strategies as generating and testing hypotheses, trial and error, working backward, and considering alternative hypotheses. Given its complexity, academic problem solving demands the use of one or more of the mental habits of critical and creative thinking. I frequently use the following problem to illustrate that an academic problem can challenge all levels of intellectual ability. Unless you have heard it before, the problem will take you a few minutes to solve. Even if you read the answer at the back of the chapter, you‘ll still need to take some time to figure out the logic behind it. In short, this problem will challenge you intellectually and probably require your use of the mental habit of persevering even when answers and solutions are not immediately apparent. Take a few minutes to solve the problem before reading further.

Problem #3

Three men were in prison. One was blind, another could see out of only one eye, and the third could see out of both eyes. The jailer told the three that he had five hats—three white and two red. He put a hat on each of the prisoners without allowing them to see the color of their own hat. The jailer hid the remaining two hats so the prisoners could not see what color they were. The jailer then said, "If you can guess the color of your hat I will let you go free." He then asked the man who could see out of both eyes, "What color hat do you have on?" After looking at the hats of the other two prisoners, the man with sight in both eyes said: "I don‘t know." The jailer then turned to the man with one eye (who had heard the response of the man with both eyes) and said, "What color hat do you have on?" The man with one eye looked at the hats on the other two prisoners but still had to say: "I don‘t know." The jailer then turned to the blind man (who had heard the responses of the other two prisoners) and said, "Surely you can‘t tell what color hat you have, you are blind." The blind prisoner said, "Of course, I can. My hat has to be white." He was right. How did he know that his hat had to be white?

One of the reasons problems like this one tax us intellectually is that they require us to consider and test a number of possible "mental models." In fact, Johnson-Laird (1975, 1983, 1985) has dramatically illustrated that the difficulty of a problem is directly proportional to the number of mental models that must be considered to solve it. And problems that require the construction of unusual models are even more difficult because they force us to venture outside our standard schemas. Academic problems not only tax our short-term memory capacity but also require us to invent unusual cognitive structures.

In summary, academic problems are highly engaging activities that fit easily into the curriculum and are challenging enough to elicit the mental habits of effective learning. For years theorists such as Polya (1957), Wickelgren (1975), Whimby and Lochhead (1985), and Bransford and Stein (1984) have tried to demonstrate the flexibility and utility of academic problems. The more recent work of Feuerstein and his colleagues (1980) and Pogrow (1991) has illustrated their powerful effect on academic learning.

The Role of Socratic Dialogue and Debate

Socratic dialogue and debate are tools for reinforcing the dispositions of critical and creative thinking. In fact, Vosniadou and Brewer (1987) assert that they are the primary tools for enhancing a person‘s critical and creative abilities. Although many teachers use the term "Socratic dialogue," there is some confusion regarding its form and function. Paul (1990) has probably provided the most guidance for using it in the classroom. He says that a teacher can facilitate Socratic dialogue by asking five types of questions as students discuss specific topics:

• Questions of clarification: For example, "What do you mean by . .? Could you give me an example?"

• Questions that probe assumptions: For example, "What are you assuming? What is underlying what you say?"

• Questions that probe reasons and evidence: For example, "How do you know? What are your reasons for saying that?"

• Questions about viewpoints on perspectives: For example, "What might someone say who believed that. . .? What is an alternative?"

• Questions that probe implications and consequences: For example, "What are you implying by that? Because of that what might happen?"

Ideally, of course, students should learn to ask these questions themselves as they participate in discussions. Teachers can help them learn to do so by providing guided practice in the form of organized activities:

• Conduct an initial exploratory discussion about a complex issue and help students break the issue into simpler parts. Students can then choose the aspects they want to explore and focus their discussion on these more specific aspects of the issue.

• Set up a "fishbowl" discussion. One-third of the class sits in a circle and discusses a topic. The rest of the class, in a circle around the others, listens and takes notes, then discusses the discussion.

Debate is closely related to Socratic dialogue. Here students prepare and defend an argument for one side of an issue. I once listened to junior high students debate the ban of fur sales, artfully using Socratic questions to argue their cases. I was impressed by their level of expertise. Apparently, such skills are common in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the local school district has systematically implemented Richard Paul‘s theories (Williamson 1990).

Don‘t Underestimate Primary Students

At times, when presented with the notion of teaching and reinforcing productive habits of mind, some primary teachers have asserted that such habits are too abstract for primary students to grasp. Unfortunately, this is a common misconception. All students, even those in the primary grades, can and do use the mental habits of self-regulation, critical thinking, and creative thinking. Several studies have shown that young children function at a much higher level than previously thought, as long as the content they are dealing with is familiar to them (in Yussen 1985).

Debra Pickering, one of the co-authors of the Dimensions of Learning program, told me a story about a 1st grade class in which the teacher was reinforcing the mental habits of restraining impulsivity and being open-minded. Students were asked to identify explicit examples in their own lives and in others‘. At first, the teacher wondered if students really understood the concept. Her answer came when students were asked to say good-bye to the student teacher. One student presented the student teacher with the "Happy-Gram" in Figure 6.4.

In case you cannot decipher the student‘s handwriting and spelling, his message reads: "Mrs. McD, she‘s done a great job teaching and restraining impulsivity and being open minded. Great job!" When asked to explain what he meant by his remarks, the student was able to identify specific examples of how the student teacher had restrained impulsivity and remained open-minded. As this example shows, even young students can understand the mental habits of self-regulation, critical thinking, and creative thinking. It would be a serious mistake to delay teaching and reinforcing the habits of mind because of a misconception about the abilities and interests of younger students.

Planning for Uses of the Habits of Mind

As with the other four dimensions, the habits of mind require planning and overt attention if students are to value, learn, and practice them. To explore this idea, let‘s consider Ms. Conklin‘s planning for Dimension 5.

Ms. Conklin‘s Planning for Dimension 5

Throughout her career, Ms. Conklin has assumed that she has been reinforcing positive habits of mind. Only recently has she begun to overtly teach them. Her motivation for planning in a more overt manner increased when she realized that she could not remember the last time she did anything specifically to reinforce a productive habit of mind. She thought to herself, "They‘re just like attitudes and perceptions. I think I do things to reinforce them, but I‘m not really sure I actually do."

Since then, she has planned to reinforce a few of the habits of mind during each unit. In the last unit, she emphasized planning and seeking accuracy. In this unit, she decides to emphasize three mental habits: one creative-thinking habit and two self-regulatory habits:

• Engaging intensely in tasks even when answers and solutions are not immediately apparent (creative).

• Becoming aware of your own thinking (self-regulatory).

• Using resources (self-regulatory).

 

She decides that she will introduce the critical-thinking habit by telling students the story of how she took seven years to get her master‘s degree, transferring to two universities and, at times, feeling that she would never finish. She concludes that she will not introduce the self-regulatory mental habits because she and the students have discussed them before.

To reinforce the creative-thinking habit, she decides to use problem solving as a sponge activity. Each day she‘ll select a few problems and use them when class slows down, when students‘ energy starts to wane. She will foster the mental habit of using available resources by reminding students about its importance as they work on their projects. She will also ask students a few "probing" questions so that they can reflect on their use of all the mental habits being emphasized in the unit. As she makes these decisions, she records them in a planning guide (see Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5. Unit Planning Guide for Dimension 5: Productive Habits of Mind

What I will do to help students engage in:

Ms. Conklin‘s planning illustrates three basic decisions:

1. Which mental habits will be emphasized? It would be impractical to focus on all fifteen of the mental habits listed in this chapter in a single unit of instruction. A teacher can legitimately emphasize only one or two in any one- to six-week period of time. In her unit, Ms. Conklin focuses on three mental habits. The ideal, though, is that over time students will be exposed to all the mental habits in direct and indirect ways. When presenting this notion to teachers, I commonly ask, "What would education be like if the productive habits of mind were reinforced to some extent in every unit of instruction?" Although the answer to this question is pure conjecture, we can suggest some interesting possibilities. For instance, perhaps these fifteen mental habits are the "core curriculum" that ties all subjects together, the one set of skills that do transfer to almost all learning situations.

2. Which mental habits will be introduced? As I noted earlier in this chapter, given their lack of emphasis in our society, many of the mental habits must be introduced to students so that their nature and importance are clear. This, of course, takes time away from content coverage. Once introduced, however, the mental habits can be easily integrated into a unit of instruction. Ms. Conklin decided that only the creative-thinking habit would require introduction. The two self-regulatory habits had already been discussed at an earlier date.

3. How will the mental habits be reinforced? Introducing a mental habit without reinforcing it does little to help students internalize it and make it part of their regular behavior. Consequently, from the Dimensions of Learning perspective, activities that reinforce selected habits of mind should be as common as activities that deal with content. The activities Ms. Conklin selected will certainly take some time—but not an excessive amount. In many cases, then, the habits of mind can easily be part of regular classroom instruction without sacrificing content. Indeed, teachers who systematically teach and reinforce the productive habits of mind report that it is well worth the effort because, once learned, the habits are powerful tools for increasing the effectiveness of students‘ learning.

In summary, the productive habits of mind emphasized in Dimension 5 are similar to the positive attitudes and perceptions highlighted in Dimension 1: they permeate everything that occurs in the classroom. When students use productive habits of mind, they enhance their learning; when they don‘t, they impede their learning.

Answers to Problems

Problem #1: Bob started with 7 rocks. He gave Louise half of the collection (3 ½) plus half a rock. That means he gave Louie 4 and had 3 left. Of the remaining three, he gave Joe half of the collection (1 ½) plus half a rock. Thus he gave 2 away and had one left.

Problem #2: Given that Ian started and ended at the same time on both days, he had to be at the same spot at the same time once on both days, even though he was traveling at different rates. The best way to prove this to yourself is to imagine Ian as two people. One starts up the mountain at 7:00 a.m. and the other starts down the mountain at the same time. If they both reach their destination at 3:00 p.m., they will have to cross at some point on the path even though they traveled at different rates.

Problem #3: Given that the man with two good eyes and the man with one good eye could not figure out the color of their hats, the blind man had to be wearing a white hat for the following reasons: Because the man with two good eyes couldn‘t figure out the color of his hat, he must have seen a white and a white or a white and a red (if he had seen two red hats he would have known the color of his hat). Hearing the answer of the man with two good eyes, the man with one good eye must have seen a white hat on the blind man. If he had seen a red hat on the blind man he could have concluded that his hat had to be white because he would have known that the man with two good eyes also saw the red hat on the blind man. The reasoning of the man with one good eye would have been: "If the man with two good eyes saw a red hat on the blind man like I am seeing and couldn‘t figure out the color of his hat, then he must have seen a white hat on me." Thus, if the blind man had a red hat on, at least the man with one good eye (the second prisoner to guess) would have been able to figure out the color of his hat. Consequently, the blind man must have had a white hat because that is the only way one of the first two prisoners could not have figured out the color of his own hat.