Assessing Habits of Mind 193who are self-assessing. Self-knowledge is the first step in this kind of self-
assessment.
Much of the work of self-evaluation is developed through metacog-
nitive processes using the habit of thinking about your thinking. Students
need to be able to answer questions such as these:
•What is the best environment for your learning?
•Where do you choose to study?
•Where do you choose to work creatively?
•How do you work with others?
•What is your preferred learning mode (e.g., visual or kinesthetic)?
•What do you consider to be your talents or strengths (e.g., arts, oral
presentations, persuasive arguments)?
•Where do your interests lie?
•How do you use criteria to determine whether your work is good?
•Do you check for accuracy and precision?
•Are you persistent as you develop your work?
Many teachers ask students to regularly reflect on questions such as these.
The self-assessment data generated by these questions promote students’
learning and growth. The data also provide useful information for teach-
ers as they facilitate learning.
Self-knowledge builds on internal and external reflections and obser-
vations. Feedback from teachers is a rich source of external data. Teach-
ers can give evaluative feedback about thinking by focusing on a variety
of questions:
•What is the student’s disposition or attitude toward learning?
•How does the student think about assessing information?
•What information does the student consider important?
•How does the student use a reasoning process to think about the
information being gathered?
•How does the student use strategies to solve problems?
•How does the student communicate the results of the student’s
learning?
•What is evidenced in the student’s performance as the student
applies this learning to new situations?