the classroom should be filled with a variety of data sources: books, ency-
clopedias, almanacs, thesauruses, CD-ROMs, and databases. Students
should have contact with knowledgeable people in the community. Tech-
nology provides rich opportunities for students to contact others through
the Internet to explore theories and test their ideas. Field trips are impor-
tant, too, not just for their content but because they provide students oppor-
tunities to plan for and reflect on learning.
Students must manage more information and resources than ever
before. As they move into adulthood, they will need the discipline of
the Habits of Mind to guide their higher education and their careers. A
rich, responsive classroom environment helps prepare them for all these
experiences.
Attention to Readiness and Sequence
Theorists have clearly established both the nature of thinking capa-
bilities and the sequence in which they appear in human beings. Too
often, however, educators disregard these theories and present learning
activities before students are ready for them developmentally. To find suc-
cess, educators must introduce curriculum for the Habits of Mind in a
sequence that matches children’s development.
One of the chief causes for failure in formal education is that educa-
tors begin with abstractions through print and language rather than with
real, material action. Learning progresses through stages of increasing
complexity (the number of ideas and factors we can think about) and
increasing abstraction (progressing from a concrete object to a pictorial
representation of the object, to a symbol that stands for the object, to a
spoken word that stands for the symbol). Curriculum and instruction—
including work with the Habits of Mind—are more meaningful if they
are sequenced in a manner consistent with the stages of cognitive devel-
opment (Lowery, 2001; see also Chapter 4).
Erik Erikson (1963) reminds us that as children proceed through differ-
ent stages of development, they are focused on specific psychological, social,
and emotional tasks. He reminds us that learners are simultaneously expe-
riencing new learning that is accessible for us metacognitively, behaving as
learners in a way that is observable to others, and internalizing the learning
102 Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind