1
Jodarski
Jodarski, Nicole
Dr. Dan Glisczinski
EDSE 4501
February 7, 2008
Creating Independent Learners by Fostering Habits of Mind
From the very first day of kindergarten to the daygraduate students defend their doctoral dissertations, students seek to perform one main purpose, to solve problems, or perhaps more specifically, to overcome the challenge of making the unknown known. How does one do this? What allows a kindergartener to begin to comprehend the shape and formation of the letters of the alphabet? What permits a graduate student to logically uphold the conclusions drawn from months of research?
Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick would argue that each person develops specific skills, or “habits of mind” that allow him/her to attend to the unknown. These habits of mind are “ways in which humans display their intelligence” (Costa and Kallick 2). Of course, habits of mind are in no way limited to skills that are useful inside a classroom. They are functions all human minds perform when faced with any number of challenging situations. For example, a swimmer training for the Olympics employs persistence (one of the habits of mind specifically identified by Costa and Kallick) when she does not leave the pool until she can finally swim an entire length using only one breath. A toddler is perhaps the best example of someone who performs the habit of mind of gathering data through all senses. It is not enough for a toddler to know that the small plastic cube he holds is a toy block. A toddler seeks not only to see and feel the block, but also to smell it, to listen to the noises itis able to make, and even to determine what it tastes like. How then can a teacher go about fostering these habits of mind in students to make them more adept at learning? Can habits of mind be taught, or are they simply a set of innate dispositions within a person’s mind?
I believe Dr. Mel Levine would tend to veer towards the latter conclusion, that each person is predisposed to a particular type of mind which privileges a particular set of problem solving strategies. In his book, A Mind at a Time, Levine states, “We all live with minds wired to excel in one area and crash in another” (23). Levine identifies eight different neurodevelopmental systems that interact to influence brain functioning. Although neurodevelopmental systems/functions are not synonymous with habits of mind, Levine does say, “Our minds make use of different clusters of neurodevelopmental functions to learn specific skills and to create particular products” (28). Levine goes on to propose that each person is born with a set of neurodevelopmental functions that are particularlyacute and other neurodevelopmental functions that are more like “dysfunctions”. If a person’s brain functioning influences the skills that a person learns to “create products,” couldn’t one say that a person’s habits of mind are,in a way, determined by how his/her brain is wired?
Levine does not go so far as to say that a person’s learning is completely limited by how the brain is wired. Instead, he urges parents and educators to learn how strengths and weaknesses in the different neurodevelopmental systems affect learning. If different students develophabits of mind in distinct ways, then the goal of educators should be to learn how to approach each student, on a mind-to-mind basis, to help them strengthen the habits of minds they are naturally inclined to develop and also to nurture the growth of new habits of mind by creatively challenging their areas of weakness. For example, Mel Levine acknowledges that for people with an expressive language dysfunction (a specific neurodevelopmental dysfunction), the habit of mind of “thinking and communicating with clarity and precision” needs special time and attention to develop. To help a student with such a disposition, Levine first urges acknowledgment of this neurodevelopmental weakness. He says, “We need to attune regular classroom teachers and parents to listen carefully to a child to determine whether there might be a breakdown in literate language production” (144). Once the specific neurological difficulty is determined, Levine gives practical suggestions for approaching this uniquetype of mind. Levine suggests, “They should be encouraged to tell a lot of stories and describe experiences, even if this is hard for them. In school they need opportunities to make oral presentations, especially on topics that excite them” (144). The starting point for developing habits of mind is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the mind. With this assessment in hand, an educator is more prepared to develop specific strategiesthat allow students to practice the skills of independent learning.
It is all too common that teachers employ strategies which treat a classroom full of individual minds as a collective tabula rasa. Perhaps with good intentions, these educators seek to convey material to their students in the least painful way, by filling up these “empty vessels”with only the information needed to get the job done. One such example of this took place in my high school physics class. This teacher promoted laziness and a desire to take shortcuts instead of the skill of questioning and posing problems. To teach a newconcept from the text, he immediately gave us the equation needed for the particular set. He then explained how to work our way mathematically through the equation, but never even touched on thequestion of why we were learning this or how this concept plays out in an authentic setting. This type of teaching reflects what David Rigoni has deemed the “Education, Inc.” approach to teaching and learning. Instead of working on developing the processes that lead to good habits of mind and fostering independent learning, this approach focuses on a strict exchange policy in which students arrive at a solution without the mess of making and testing a series of their own hypotheses to discover the answer. This approach seriously robs the learner as the educator “[continues] to lower expectations” (Rigoni 157). In his book Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire,Rafe Esquith states, “In this fast-food society, simple solutions to complex problems are embraced far too often” (3). A simple solution to teaching physics was what this teacher had found, and the result of this simple solution was that as his student, my critical thinking skills were dulled. Although I will be the first to admit that my mind is probably not wired to understand abstract mathematical concepts as readily as it can understand figurative language, this teacher did nothing to allow me to even begin to have access to the concept behind the equation.
Standing in stark contrast to this method is the Socratic approach to learning. In this approach, the process is stressed instead of the product. What becomes important is that the student learns how to go through the steps of evaluating whether or not her/his hypothesis is valid. The teacher acts as an inquirer, asking the student the proper questions to allow him/her to arrive at a supported response. Because this approach is more learner-intensive it allows the student to become an independent learner rather than a dependent learner. The Socratic Method may be one way in which teachers can effectively guide students towards the development of habits of mind such as metacognition and questioning. However, this approach is in no way an end-all be-all answer to the question of promoting habits of mind in students.
Sometimes merely adapting the physical learning environmentto allow minds to respond to content material in new ways is a step towards developing habits of mind in students. My high school English teachers helped me to broaden my creativity, imagination, and sense of wonder by doing just these things. Instead of merely experiencing literature by looking at words on a page, my British literature teacher had us listen to a ballad to hear what this type of literature sounded like in its original format. Likewise, instead of giving us biographical information about Thoreau’s interaction with nature, our teacher took us outside to do our poetry unit under the “poet tree” so that all of our senses were receptive to the type of experience that shaped Thoreau’s words.
Another one of the habits of mind thatmy secondary school teachers were successful at creating opportunities for developing was the ability to apply past knowledge to new situations. My high school biology teacher did this particularly effectively when she assigned a project in which we had to create a cell by making an analogy. My friend Kelsey and I made a cell themed after the movie Dick (a comical take on the Watergate scandal). Each cell structure had to work in the context of our overall analogy. For example, the nucleus of our cell was the Watergate complex. The chromatin of the cell was made up of“shredded documents.” By asking us to work in the context of something we already knew it was both easier and more enjoyable to arrive at an understanding of the unknown. Also, this project gave us the freedom of choice. With this choice came the opportunity to investigate content that spans various areas of knowledge (not only biology, butU.S. history and pop culture as well). My teachers who have most effectively shaped my habits of mind all understood that students need to learn content in a variety of ways, that active experience is important, and as Esquith notes, “failure can be part of the learning process” (3).
My philosophy of teaching is that the main goal of education is to create independent learners instead of dependent learners. This can be done by showing and exploring strategies that can be developed to facilitate comprehension instead of simply giving information that equips students with knowledge at the cost of understanding. This idea comes from Kylene Beers’ book When Kids Can’t Read What Teachers Can Do. I believe that authentic learning happens when teachers provide authentic contexts that allow learning to happen. Perhaps most importantly, I realize that each student is an individual whose ability to learn must be understood in the context of his/her particular natural neurological endowment, existing habits of mind, andprior experiences. This idea is supported by Levine and Costa & Kallick. Subsequently, I think that an effective teacher is one who takes the time to understand students’ individuality and to create diverse learning experiences that appeal to many types of minds and learning styles. That said, I agree with Levine when he states, “I should never try to understand and deal with differences in learning until I know how learning works when it’s working” (28). For this reason, I realize I have much to learn before I can paint a complete picture of how my philosophy of education will become a reality in my classroom. All I can offer on this point is a reflection on my limited teaching experience mixed with several strategies suggested by teachers in my field who seem to be successful at creating independent learners.
For several summers I had the opportunity to teach a range of students ages 5-15 to swim. As I reflect on my experience of being a swimming instructor, I realize how little I considered just what my beliefs about education were, much less how to implement them. In my future classroom, I want to take the time to get to know each of my students and to understand how they learn. In my swimming class, it was a rare occasion when I could remember 100% of my students’ names. I think this is something that should be done initially in the classroom. Taking the time to be familiar with students is the first step to understanding how to provide for their educational needs. I want my classroom to be a place where learning takes place as a dialogue instead of a monologue. To do this, I plan to facilitate discussions that require students to create and test their own ideas. This may mean that instead of lecturing to them about the events that led up to the civil war in Spain, I would ask them questions asking them to draw on their own experiences about what factors may contribute to civil strife. I want to be an educator that is adaptable. I will attempt to create lessons that draw on a variety of different habits of mind, and I will consider as I plan my lessons what I can specifically do for each of my students that helps to utilize their strengths and address their weaknesses. This may mean that while one student works on memorizing verb conjugations through their motor system by acting out a play, another student with a highly developed spatial ordering system creates a diagram to illustrate these tenses.
Specific strategies that could be implemented in a Communication Arts classroom include the literature circle (Daniels) and the writing workshop. Both of these are individualized modes of instruction that allow for self-direction and peer interaction. These strategies create a “decentralized classroom” in which the instructor acts as a facilitator and knowledge-seeker instead of the sole content expert (Daniels 50). Beers also offers insight into how to create independent learners. She suggests that one of the reasons dependent learners (readers, specifically) remain dependent is because they do not see the invisible processes of developing habits of mind. Because these students cannot see the struggles and failures their peers go through to become independent learners, they believe success to be entirely based on innate abilities (Beers 34). To help demonstrate how successful learners develop habits of mind such as metacognition, Beers models for her students the thought process of an independent learner. In my classroom, I want to be a teacher who is humble enough to model the learning process. An example of this type of modeling is writing first drafts in front of students on an overhead projection so that they can see that writing is a process which requires many failed attempts. Actually participating in the learning process with my students is one way in which I can foster habits of mind within myself (remaining open to continuous learning) and model them for my students. I want to be an example that, “True excellence takes sacrifice, mistakes, and enormous amounts of effort” (Esquith 3).
I will admit that it seems like a daunting task to evaluate and consider each student in the framework of her/his individual learning abilities. I am not, at this point, one hundred percent sure where a teacher begins to do this and to take the steps to create a classroom that reflects this philosophy. For this reason, I believe the best I can do as an educator in training is to continue to learn from scholars such as Levine, Costa & Kallick, and Beers, and to continue to evaluate strategies as I learn and implement them in the classroom.
Works Cited
Beers, Kylene. When Kids Can't Read. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003.
Costa, Arthur L., and Bena Kallick. "Describing 16 Habits of Mind." (2000). 1 Feb. 2008 <
Daniels, Harvey. Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in the Student-Centered Classroom. Stenhouse, 2002.
Esquith, Rafe. Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire. Viking, 2007.
Levine, Mel. A Mind at a Time. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
Norris, Michele. "Rafe Esquith Offers His Fiery Teaching Methods." NPR 22 Jan. 2007. 27 Jan. 2008 <
Rigoni, David. Teaching What Can't Be Taught. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2002. 154-160.