In teaching toward the Habits of Mind, we are interested in not only how
many answers students know but also how students behave when they
don’t know an answer. We are interested in observing how students produce
knowledge rather than how they merely reproduce it. A critical
attribute of intelligent human beings is not only having information but
also knowing how to act on it.
By definition, a problem is any stimulus, question, task, phenomenon,
or discrepancy, the explanation for which is not immediately known.
Intelligent behavior is performed in response to such questions and problems.
Thus, we are interested in focusing on student performance under
those challenging conditions—dichotomies, dilemmas, paradoxes, polarities,
ambiguities, and enigmas—that demand strategic reasoning, insightfulness,
perseverance, creativity, and craftsmanship to resolve