Lim notes that a habit of mind can also be regarded as a cognitive disposition—a tendency to act, mentally, in a certain way in response to certain situations. When a person has a particular habit of mind, he or she has a disposition to act according to that habit of mind. Lim (2009, January) uses the term impulsive disposition to refer to the proclivity of “doing whatever first comes to mind … or diving into the first approach that comes to mind” (Watson & Mason, 2007, p. 207). Lim (2009, January) offered the following strategies to address impulsive disposition: (a) do not teach algorithms and formulas prematurely; (b) pose problems that necessitate a particular algorithm or concept, that intrigue students, that require students to attend to the meaning of numbers and symbols, and that require students to explain and justify; (c) include contra-problems to promote skepticism; and (d) include superficially-similar-but-structurally-different problems on tests and examinations.
Selden and Selden (2009, January) have conceptualized (small) habits of mind as habitual situation-action pairs or behavioral schemas—“a form of (often tacit) procedural knowledge that