Habits of Mind
Responding with Wonderment and Awe
“The most beautiful experience in the world is the experience of the mysterious.” Albert Einstein.
Describing the 200 best and brightest of the All USA College Academic Team identified by USA Today, Tracey Wong Briggs (1999) states, “They are creative thinkers who have apassion for what they do.” Efficacious people have not only an “I CAN” attitude, but also an “I ENJOY” feeling. They seek problems to solve for themselves and to submit to others. They delight in making up problems to solve on their own and request enigmas from others. They enjoy figuring things out by themselves, and continue to learn throughout their lifetimes.
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,” or “Go ask your father; he’s the brain in this family. “Its 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 subjects after they didn’t have to in high school or college. Many people perceive thinking as hard work and therefore recoil from situations, which demand “too much” of it.
We want our students, however to be curious; to commune with the world around them; to reflect on thechanging formations of a cloud; feel charmed by the opening of a bud; sense the logical simplicity of mathematical order. Students can find beauty in a sunset, intrigue in the geometric of a spider web, andexhilaration at the iridescence of a hummingbird’s wings. They see 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 them feel compelled, enthusiastic and passionate about learning, inquiring and mastering.
Listening To Others—With Understanding and Empathy
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 their point of view is one of the highest forms of intelligent behavior. Being able to paraphrase another person’s ideas, detecting indicators(cues) of their feelings or emotional states in their oral and body language (empathy), accurately expressing another person’s concepts, emotions and problems—all are indications of listening behavior (Piaget called it “overcoming ego-centrism”).
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 feeling by paraphrasing it accurately, building upon it, clarifying it, or giving an example of it.
Senge and his colleagues (1994) suggest that to listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the “music”, but also to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but also for what he or she 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 yourself, so you can slow your mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning.
We spend 55 percent of our lives listening yet it is one of the least taught skills in schools. We often say we are listening but in actuality, we are rehearsing in our head what we are going to say next when ourpartner is finished. Some students ridicule, laugh at, or put down other students’ ideas. They interrupt are unable to build upon, consider the merits of, or operate on another person’s ideas. We want our students to learn to devote their mental energies to another person and invest themselves in their partner’s ideas. We wish students to learn to hold in abeyance their own values, judgments, opinions, and prejudices in order to listen to and entertain another person’s thoughts. This is a very complex skill requiring the ability to monitor one’s own thoughts while, at the same time, attending to the partner’s words. This does not mean that we can’t disagree with some one. A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with.
Questioning and Posing Problems
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 between humans and other forms of life 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.
For example: requests for data to support others’ conclusions and assumptions—such questions as,
“What evidence do you have…..?”
“How do you know that’s true?”
“How reliable is this data source?”
They pose questions about alternative points of view:
“From whose viewpoint are we seeing, reading of hearing?”
“From what angle, what perspective are we viewing this situation?”
Students pose questions, which make causal connections and relationships:
“How are these people (events) (situations) related to each other?”
“What produced this connection?”
They pose hypothetical problems characterized by “iffy”-type questions:
“What do you think would happen IF…..?”
“IF that is true, then what might happen if….?”
Inquirers recognize discrepancies and phenomena in their environment and probe into their causes:
“Why do cats purr?”
“How high can birds fly?” “
Why does the hair on my head grow so fast, while the hair on my
arms and legs grows so slowly?
“What would happen if we put the saltwater fish in a fresh water
aquarium?”
“What are some alternative solutions to international conflicts other than wars?”
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 of search and solution finding.
Striving for Accuracy
A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake. Confucius
Measure a thousand times and cut once. Turkish proverb
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.
As students mature in this Habit of Mind, we observe them taking greater care with their work. They check their projects, assignments, and tests again and again, asking others (“critical friends”) for feedback and correction. They establish standards of excellence, and they attempt to meet—and even exceed—those standards. These students set higher and higher standards as they attempt to excel beyond a previous record. They express dissatisfaction with incomplete or sloppy work, and they request opportunities to improve upon their work. They also demonstrate a lack of complacency with the status quo.