if they go on to college, if they take a job, if they become active in their
community, and if they marry and raise a family.
Chapter 3 describes the place of the Habits of Mind in the curricu-
lum. We believe that the Habits of Mind do not displace the agreed-upon
standards of learning that have been developed and adopted by the school.
Rather, the content that is taught serves as a vehicle and provides an
opportunity for learning the Habits of Mind. What is unique about the
Habits of Mind is that they provide a common terminology for commu-
nication by all members of the school community: parents, teachers,
administrators, and students. Thus, the Habits of Mind provide a shared
vision of the attributes and characteristics of the graduates of the school.
In that way, staff members from diverse departments and grade levels can
work together even though the students and the content they teach may
be different.
Chapter 4 describes a journey of continued growth in the Habits of
Mind. Five dimensions contribute to that growth. These dimensions
become the focus of instruction and assessment to help learners progress
toward the internalization of the Habits of Mind. The intent of this chap-
ter is to provide a map that a staff or school district can use in planning
for the continual modification of learning experiences so they become
more complex, sophisticated, and appropriate for students’ development
over time.
Chapter 4 is coauthored with our colleague James Anderson, who
worked to infuse the Habits of Mind with hundreds of teachers through-
out Australia under the auspices of the Australian National Schools Net-
work. They observed that all students use the Habits of Mind; some use
them intuitively, whereas others have learned them because of instruc-
tion or modeling by parents and previous teachers. However, they also
noted that those same students might not use the habits skillfully or strate-
gically. They may not fully realize the value of them, or they may use the
habits in a limited range of situations. However, these educators found
that over time and with increasingly sophisticated instruction, students
seem to progress as they mature, become more skillful, and develop
greater inclination toward and value for the Habits of Mind. This journey
also provides a basis for the instructional design described in Chapter 5
and for the assessment strategies described in Part III of this book.
2 Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind