The Impact of Habits of Mind on Students’ Achievement

A Study Conducted in Collaboration with Teachers from Xinmin Secondary School

Ang Hwee Khoon

Introduction

Since 1997 at the Seventh International Conference on Thinking in Singapore when the vision of Thinking Schools, Learning Nation was outlined for educators to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, a number of local researches has been stimulated by the array of different thinking programmes practiced in the States, UK, Canada and Australia. This research is an attempt to assess the impact of Arthur Costa’s Habits of Mind (HOM) thinking programme in a typical Singapore classroom. It studies the impact of this programme on the academic performance of secondary school students.

A whole school Habits of Mind thinking programme was implemented in Xinmin Secondary School in 2003. As part of professional development to equip teachers with the skills to infuse HOM into the classroom, teachers went through training conducted by the Art Costa Centre for Thinking. Selected teachers also made local and overseas visits to Habits of Mind schools and shared their findings with their colleagues.

A HOM committee was set up in Xinmin Secondary with HOM Champs to promote the use of HOM in each department. Infusion lessons were reflected in the Schemes of Work and morning and weekly assembly periods were dedicated to the explicit teaching of HOM. Beyond the curriculum, the school management as well as the teachers would find teachable moments to encourage students to reflect on HOM in their everyday lives. Two talks on HOM were also conducted for parents to ensure that this programme was extended into the home environment.

Research Methodology

The research study was thus carried out in Xinmin Secondary School as it has in place a structured Habits of Mind Programme. The study was conducted from February to April 2005 over a period of three months. The study adopted a two-pronged approach for the teaching of thinking skills to the treatment group. One approach was for independent explicit lessons focused wholly on the teaching of Habits of Mind and thinking skills (Costa, 1991, 1997 and 2001; Costa and Lowery, 1985), while the other infused them into the curriculum (Costa, 1991 and 2001; Swartz and Parks, 1994). The use of a treatment group and a control group from the same stream allowed deeper understanding of the impact of Costa’s Habits of Mind on students’ performance in pre and post intervention logical and critical thinking skills (Roadrangka et al., 1983; Lim, 1996, 2003) tests as well as tests in academic subjects such as English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Geography.

The instruments administered to the students to assess the thinking skills were:

Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT), and

Critical Thinking Skills Test (CT)

Habits of Mind

The notion of habits of mind is one which has been used across many disciplines and levels, and can be general, or domain-specific. There are many different definitions and perspectives of the general habits of mind, but most revolve around active learning and include critical, creative and self-regulated thinking and learning.

Marzano (1992) defined habits of mind as mental habits individuals could develop to render thinking and learning more self-regulated. Facione (1994: 3) identified habits of mind as a characterological profile, a constellation of attitudes, a set of intellectual virtues which dispose one to think critically. He further stated that these habits of mind could transcend and apply to all domains and permeates deeply into each domain. For Goldenberg (1996: 13), habits of mind were the ways of thinking that one acquired so well, made so natural, and incorporated so fully that they become mental habits.

Costa defined a habit as a disposition to behave intelligently when confronted with problems. He saw that in order to employ these habits of mind, a composite of skills, attitudes, cues, past experiences and proclivities were necessary (2001b: 80). Building on Perkins, Jay and Tishman’s triadic conception of thinking dispositions of sensitivity, inclination and ability (1993), Costa surfaced 5 key characteristics of people who employed these habits of mind:

1. Inclination – they felt a tendency to employ patterns of intellectual behaviors;

2. Value – they chose to value and employ the most effective patterns of intellectual behaviors rather than other, less productive behaviors;

3. Sensitivity – they perceived opportunities for, and the appropriateness of, employing a particular pattern;

4. Capability – they possessed the basic skills and capacities to carry out the intellectual behaviors; and

5. Commitment – they constantly strived to reflect on and improve their performance of the behaviors.

Hence, he saw that habits of mind not only were mental disciplines, they provided the dispositions necessary to do the skilful thinking required within and beyond the classroom walls (Costa: 2001a).

Whilst he stated that there was not a finite number, he recognized 16 specific behaviors/habits of the efficient, effective problem solver.

1. Persisting

2. Managing Impulsivity

3. Listening To Others with Understanding and Empathy

4. Thinking Flexibly

5. Thinking about Our Thinking (Metacognition)

6. Striving for Accuracy and Precision

7. Questioning and Posing Problems

8. Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations

9. Thinking and Communicating with Clarity and Precision

10. Gathering Data Through All Senses

11. Creating, Imagining, Innovating

12. Responding with Wonderment and Awe

13. Taking Responsible Risks

14. Finding Humor

15. Thinking Interdependently

16. Remaining Open to Continuous Learning

Costa stated that the habits were not practiced isolation, but that a cluster of them could be used in any one situation (2001: 80). He also said that these habits were ‘a force directing us toward increasingly authentic, congruent and ethical behavior… the primary vehicles in the lifelong journey toward integration’ (2000a: 39). As Lipman said “There needs to be the cultivation of creativity in judgment, of independence in judgment, of a sense of the importance of making one’s own assessment, one’s own evaluation” (1992: 13). Costa’s habits were the kind of code in which we thought and acted in the long term.

Costa saw that the habits would be used in situations which were ambiguous. The habits would become a framework of behaviors in situations where answers were not immediately obvious – a skill which would prepare students for real life (2003). He thus saw that they transcended the school environment, and were equally applicable to adults as well as students. This framework of mind and behaviors would stand students in good stead for other tests they would sit throughout the rest of their lives.

The habits had developmental qualities which transcended all subject matter commonly taught in school, and the preferred mode of transmitting these habits would be to infuse them into the culture, values and norms of the entire school community. He proposed a model which could be used to infuse the Habits into the curriculum (2001a).

Figure 6: Components of a Well Developed Thinking Skills Program

Source : Costa, 2001a

The model proposed a balance of direct teaching and infusion. It posited that that direct teaching of the skills needed to be supported by constant reinforcement and opportunities for the habits to be practiced. Hence, teaching and learning of the habits should not only inform the curriculum, they should also shape the way in which content was selected, and the mode in which assessment was carried out. As such, the habits determined not only behavior, but attitude and importance of thinking within the curriculum. This model was adopted in this present study.

Findings

Findings from this study showed that students who were exposed to the Habits of Mind showed subjects who had gone through the Habits of Mind score significantly higher (p<0.05) in the logical and critical thinking tests but did not show significant difference except in Physics for the class tests. In terms of thinking dispositions, more subjects from the Treatment Group became formal thinkers, from 23.1% to 38.5%. Interviews with teachers and reflection journals of the subjects in the Treatment Group drew additional insight that the behaviour of the Treatment Group improved, with greater awareness of their thoughts and active practice of the Habits of Mind. Results from this study could serve as benchmark data for schools interested in assessing their thinking programmes using the Group Assessment of Logical Thinking or the Critical Thinking tests.

The data collected in this study showed that the logical thinking skills of the students in the Treatment Group who were exposed to Habits of Mind showed marked improvement in comparison with the Control Group students. At the post intervention GALT scores, the Control and Treatment Groups yielded the following ranges, 3 to 10 and 4 to 11, with M = 6.41, SD = 1.54 and M = 7.15, SD = 1.53 respectively. The mean scores for the subjects in the Treatment Group were significantly higher (M = 7.15, SD = 1.53) on the average than those in the Control Group (M = 6.41, SD = 1.54) who were not exposed to the Habits of Mind during the period of research. An independent-samples t test verified that there was significant correlation between the performance of the subjects in the Treatment and the Control Group. This is evident that the Habits of Mind had influenced the performance of the subjects exposed to it.

The CT test instrument is a very detailed instrument comprising ninety-one items that analyses six key thinking skills which are further refined as eighteen sub categories of critical thinking skills. The post intervention scores of the Treatment and Control Groups were used in the analysis of whether the Habits of Mind had impacted the critical thinking skills of students exposed to it.

The scores of the subjects in the Treatment Group at the post intervention CT test affirmed that there was a positive correlation between their performance and the Control Group’s performance at the CT test. The result of testing the null hypothesis that there was no significant relationship in critical thinking skills among students from different classes (Treatment vs. Control) yielded the two-tailed probability of 0.004. This was significantly lower than the P < 0.05 and thus, the null hypothesis was rejected. This meant that the subjects who had been through the Habits of Mind programme showed significant improvement in their scores at the CT test in comparison with the Control Group who had not. Notably, the subjects in the Treatment Group had higher mean scores (M = 68.85, SD = 5.45) on the average than those in the Control Group (M = 62.73, SD = 11.37).

The subjects in the Treatment Group had higher mean score of 68.85 for the post intervention CT test while the Control Group subjects had a mean score of 62.73. The subjects in the Treatment Group made improvements in fifteen on the eighteen categories of thinking skills they were tested on in comparison with their scores at the pre intervention test. The Control Group on the other hand only registered improvement in eight categories of critical thinking skills.

Following the analysis on logical thinking skills, the analysis of the critical thinking skills pointed to the fact that the subjects in the Treatment Group had outperformed the subjects in the Control Group who were not exposed to Habits of Mind. It is postulated that there could be a possible correlation between the logical thinking test and critical thinking test results and that one has an influence over the other and vice-versa. However, this was not part of the investigation in this thesis.

The explicit and infused approach adopted in the study by the researcher as well as the teachers had contributed to the performance of the subjects in the Treatment Group. Given that the difference between the two groups of students in this present study were the exposure to the intervention programme – Habits of Mind, the CT test as well as the GALT test results could be attributed to the impact of the intervention programme. Educators interested in assessing the impact of the Habits of Mind or other thinking programmes could use such instruments. The GALT and CT tests have provided useful information on the thinking ability of the students exposed to Habits of Mind. This could also be used to help educators to fine-tune the thinking programme for the pupils.

References:

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¾¾¾¾¾¾ (Ed.). (2001). Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking (3^rd Edition). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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