In the book Cultures of Thinking in Action, author Dr. Ron Ritchhart builds on 25 years of leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero to provide a practical resource for teachers who are “eager to cultivate a culture of thinking in their schools and their classrooms.” He sets out ten essential mindsets that encapsulate “the core ideas we as educators must seek to develop in ourselves” first. A detailed teacher discussion and review of each mindset explored in this book can be found in this online book club series.
The second mindset discussed in Cultures of Thinking in Action is: We Can’t Directly Teach Dispositions; We Must Enculturate Them. With the term ‘mindset,’ the author “captures the idea that the way one views and thinks about things matters in the terms of shaping our actions and directing our energies.
As we begin to understand the second mindset, Dr. Ron Ritchhart asks educators to consider two important questions that have guided him in his own work creating cultures of thinking:
- Who are our students becoming as thinkers and learners as a result of their time with us?
- What do we want the students we teach to be like as adults?
Defining Dispositions in the Context of Learning
Dr. Ritchhart writes in Cultures of Thinking in Action, “a quality education not only fosters rich understanding of the content, but also develops the thinking dispositions one will need for a lifetime.” What are the types of dispositions – or personality traits – that cultivate a life-long love of learning? They may be similar to the traits you think of great students having, things like creativity, inquisitiveness, and open-mindedness. Dr. Ritchhart considers some others as well, including strategic, skeptical, and ‘seeker of truth.’
These dispositions can also serve as motivators to propel students into action, notes Dr. Ritchhart. When a student is curious about something, for example, they are motivated to work to uncover the “why” behind it. If we think of a student with a skeptical disposition, they’re not motivated to take the easy way out – they want to understand the why. How do we allow students to develop dispositions like these through the culture we create in our classrooms? First, we must ask ourselves what dispositions we are modeling for our students. For example, are we modeling intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness by asking open-ended questions and highlighting the value of diverse ideas and experiences?
When we shift from a learning environment where teachers are the primary holders of information to one propelled by the experience, knowledge, and critical thinking skills that our students bring – what they discover can surprise us! And that process of self-discovery propels students’ desire to persist and work hard. Building a learning community where everyone is valued for their ideas and experiences allows us all to take part in the learning process. As teachers, this gives us the unique opportunity to learn from our students as we model dispositions like curiosity and ‘seeker of truth,’ while nurturing a love of learning in our students.
Cultivating Dispositions in the Classroom
What do we need to do in our classrooms to promote development of the dispositions that will serve our students well throughout their lives and careers? What type of classroom culture supports self-discovery? If we want our students to develop traits like creativity, curiosity, and open-mindedness – we must give them the time and space to do so. Creating a classroom culture where these traits are encouraged and rewarded is a good place to start, as is building a learning environment that is safe for students to think outside the box. We can also structure tasks so that they provide the opportunity for students to engage in those dispositions.
All teachers have felt the idea of, “Okay, my kids are doing this work, but 'so what?'” before. When we build a culture that promotes building dispositions over “doing the work,” then the process of thinking and learning about the world around us becomes the task for both teachers and students. That’s a much more authentic way to propel action and promote learning than “because it’s on the test.”
Dr. Ritchhart notes that we can’t just teach a unit on creativity or put up a poster listing the habits students should have and expect them to be adopted. Telling our students that it’s important to be inquisitive or open to different points of view also isn’t enough. They need to experience first-hand what it feels like to be curious in our classroom. How do we put this into action? Here’s an example – instead of close reading to build an appreciation of text features in a non-fiction text, we can provide an opportunity for students to put those skills to work by engaging them in the Picture Thinking Routine, designed to engage students in making sense of specific elements they notice within an image - to then project meaning on that image and find out how accurate their prediction is.
KnowAtom’s next generation science curriculum is built by teachers on decades of classroom experience and field research on how students learn. Today, we know that students are learning deeply and more meaningfully when they have agency over what they are learning and can connect it to real-world phenomena. Our goal is to create an environment for leaping – where students feel supported by their teachers and peers to make that leap in connection, or in finding a different way to solve a problem, or in changing their own thinking, or felling confident enough to challenge someone else's thinking. When students have agency in the classroom they own their own outcomes, and they are challenged to reflect on what those outcomes mean - what they’ve learned. That very personal experience propels students to get authentically excited about what they want to figure out next.
Engaging a Learning Disposition in the Classroom
One way to build a culture of thinking that promotes practicing these dispositions is to focus less on the work that gets done (quantity of product) and more on the how (the process of developing an understanding). If we think about how we can get our students to act and engage differently when they step out of our classroom because of what they accomplished inside it, we can uncover new ways to encourage, promote, and reward dispositions like inquisitiveness and taking-action. To promote creativity and encourage curiosity, we have to show our students that we value and consider different points of view. We must show them that it’s okay to change our minds – by actively modeling and celebrating it.
For example, teachers who are actively listening with curiosity to engage their students' ideas instead of looking for one “right” answer might notice and encourage a student who is pushing back on her peers, explaining their thinking and why they disagree. When we provide opportunities for students to engage with their own ideas, they are connecting personally with the subject while building the skills and dispositions they need to succeed in life. In this example, the topic of discussion becomes less important than the learning process – and the teacher is poised to celebrate the disposition and thinking. Students learning in such an environment are building new knowledge together and learning how to give and receive feedback, change their minds, and provide evidence to support their own ideas.
Cultivating Curiosity in the Classroom
As Dr. Ritchhart notes, the disposition of curiosity has been clearly linked by researchers to improved academic success, with some research teams defining curiosity as “motivational giftedness,” (Kaufman 2017). What can teachers do to nurture a culture of curiosity in our own classrooms?
Student engagement is both the key to building a culture of thinking, and a challenge that teachers face. We know our students have the ability, but how do we get them to take the leap to try something new, to speak up in a classroom discussion, or to take the lead in their own investigation? If we think of dispositions as motivating students towards engagement, they also become a bridge between abilities and action. The degree to which students will engage lies in their belief that there is an authentic opportunity to discover something new to them. Instead of students disengaging because they think they don’t know the right answer, this culture promotes thinking critically about how you would solve the problem with the tools you have.
What can teachers do to engage students in making those intellectual leaps? Asking more open-ended questions is a great way to start but using questions as an opportunity to model curiosity further enculturates the value of student thinking. We can normalize uncertainty and not knowing "the answer" but more importantly we remove the sense that there is one specific answer being sought by the teacher. We can talk less and listen more. We can leave more room for student thinking in exploration and sense-making. We can give students more chances to experience what it feels like to discover.
In the KnowAtom curriculum, tasks use students’ innate curiosity about how the world works to engage them in thinking deeper about real-world phenomena. To support student-led inquiry, we want all students to see their thinking and participation adds value and personal reward. We can do this by creating an environment where it is okay to come with different levels of knowledge if we’re open to trying to connect, to understand, and to ask authentic questions. By setting the expectation that all students have the capacity to grow, and by celebrating that growth, we can engage all types of learners in building dispositions like these. Our goal as teachers and learners goes beyond knowledge, we're seeking to understand concepts and use skills that shape the world we live in.
Dr. Ritchhart shares that research has shown promoting curiosity has a positive impact on traditionally under-served students (Shah et al. 2018). If we think of the ways teachers can engage students who are English learners, or who bring different levels of knowledge to our class, we can better understand how promoting student-led inquiry supports different types and levels of learners.
The Challenges to Modeling Curiosity in the Classroom
If the research shows a link between dispositions and engagement in the classroom, why aren’t more schools and classrooms promoting their development? Dr. Ritchhart shares that one reason may be, “Pressure on teachers to cover content leads to discouraging curiosity.” When we focus on covering the content more than promoting the process of thinking, that “ring-the-bell model” discourages curiosity in the classroom because we all become beholden to checking items off a list.
Teachers feel this type of dilemma every day – there’s so much to cover! But this mindset of marching through the curriculum step by step isn’t building the dispositions and critical thinking skills our students need to use that information outside of the classroom. In fact, the anxiety that comes from pressuring our teachers to cover a set amount of content may be just what is causing them to revert back to the knowledge transfer and informational models of instruction.
Helping teachers change this mindset is something that administrators must play a role in, by protecting and encouraging building a school environment where curiosity becomes the engine for learning. Administrators must work to protect their teachers, help them reduce this type of anxiety, and encourage them to be curious about creating an environment where content is a journey – a grand investigation that unfolds throughout a year – not a checklist.
Building Classroom Routines that Promote the Development of Dispositions
"We don't learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience,” writes Dr. Ritchhart. “Teachers must bring dispositions to the fore so that they can be an object of study and reflection. This may mean students regularly self-assess and teachers comment and give feedback on students' development of dispositions.”
This sounds great! But how can we put it into practice effectively in our own classrooms? One way is to integrate classroom routines that promote students giving and getting regular feedback through formative assessment. When we do this successfully, students are self-regulating their own learning and learning how to adapt to different situations.
Checkpoints play a huge role in the KnowAtom curriculum. These checkpoints, implemented continuously throughout the lesson routine, create a special space in a brief amount of time to check in with students as they lead their own investigations. Just asking the question, “Talk to me about what you're doing,” is a powerful tool. These students are receiving quick, personalized interaction that is a kind of feedback that they can incorporate into their learning process. Checkpoints allow teachers to recognize if things are going well, or if individual students need more support.
Formative assessments like regular checkpoints also help students develop their own understanding of when they are on the right track, or if they need to try something different. When teachers require students to make their thinking visible by asking good follow-up questions during a checkpoint, they are ensuring that all students are playing an active role in the group. Checkpoints are a low-stakes way for students to assess themselves, receive feedback from their teacher, and practice using reasoning and evidence to support their claims.
In a sense, thinking routines make a game out of thinking by creating the structure for playful curiosity. When thinking moves become a regular routine, students can use the rules and boundaries of the routine to showcase their creativity and push the creativity of others.
Classroom Routines that Promote Reflection and Connection
The KnowAtom curriculum uses the Picture-Thinking Routine to get students to think deeper and make personal connections to the subject matter. This is a framework that models taking intellectual risks and making leaps in meaning and in connection. The classroom routine makes a game out of thinking, while creating a structure that promotes creativity and critical thinking.
In the Picture-Thinking Routine, before reading a section of text, students look at the pictures and write down a few things they notice. After the reading, the students go back to what they wrote, reflect on what they were thinking, and consider why their view might be different now. By challenging them to think deeper and celebrating that students bring their own knowledge and personal experiences to the group’s collective understanding of a topic, we are building a culture where students are rewarded for showcasing the dispositions we want to cultivate.
The idea that knowledge is flexible and nuanced sparks creative thinking and student engagement, while student-let discussions foster a deeper understanding of the subject matter. The Picture-Thinking Routine helps students learn how to make sense of the world by reflecting on what they have experienced and using that knowledge to make sense of new phenomena. It turns nonfiction reading from a passive experience to a chance for personal reflection and promotes the disposition of taking intellectual risks and making leaps in meaning and in connection and judgment to the forefront.
In this routine, students are also collecting feedback from their peers and reflecting on their insights and diverse experiences. Dr. Ritchhart writes, “When students are a part of a culture that sends messages about the value of thinking and that supports its development, then students are more likely to take on those values.”
Making Dispositions Students' Default Behavior
Building a culture of thinking is hard work that takes time and buy-in from teachers, administrators, and students. When we think about the long-term results of developing the dispositions students need to become life-long learners, it's clear that the hard work is worth it. Dr. Ritchhart points out a major reason why with the question, “How does looking closely and going deep become a student's default behavior in every subject when we enculturate these dispositions?”
In his previous work, Dr. Ritchhart defined deeper learning as the intersection between creativity, identity, and mastery. To support this, we need to build classroom environments where the instructional culture creates the opportunity, by supporting and honoring authentic engagement with real things and real ideas. This creates the opportunity for students to develop mastery of the state standards by processing what they're seeing together and individually in different ways. By creating something that’s personally meaningful these students have more skin in the game, and that helps them to use dispositions like creativity and open-mindedness to develop mastery.
It's about students building an identity as a learner practicing the discipline. We want to support students as they develop this identity and the understanding that they have the power to influence the world around them. That is a powerful lesson they will take with them, and use, when they walk out our doors.
Here are a few of Dr. Ritchhart’s suggestions for developing learning dispositions in your classroom:
- Prioritize it – Identify a few core dispositions that you care about, think about why they are important to you and how they would help your students, and then decide when and where your students will have a chance to develop them.
- Externalize it – Think out loud. Make your thinking visible to your students. As you model key dispositions, explain your thoughts and actions to your students.
- Attend to it – Identify what skills students need to carry out the dispositions you want to promote and cultivate them.
- Celebrate it – When students showcase the dispositions you want to see in your classroom, highlight it! Reinforce it by naming the disposition and celebrating the student’s work.
- Make it routine – Identify what behaviors you’d like to see as routine in your classroom and make them a part of your culture.
