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The Eight Studio Habits of Mind are:

 

Develop Craft: Learning to use tools, materials, artistic conventions; and learning to care for tools, materials, and space.

 

Engage & Persist: Learning to embrace problems of relevance within the art world and/or of personal importance, to develop focus conducive to working and persevering at tasks.

 

Envision: Learning to picture mentally what cannot be directly observed and imagine possible next steps in making a piece.

 

Express: Learning to create works that convey an idea, a feeling, or a personal meaning.

 

Observe: Learning to attend to visual contexts more closely than ordinary “looking” requires, and thereby to see things that otherwise might not be seen.

 

Reflect: Learning to think and talk with others about an aspect of one’s work or working process, and, learning to judge one’s own work and working process and the work of others.

 

Stretch & Explore: Learning to reach beyond one’s capacities, to explore playfully without a preconceived plan, and to embrace the opportunity to learn from mistakes.

 

Understand Arts Community: Learning to interact as an artist with other artists i.e., in classrooms, in local arts organizations, and across the art field) and within the broader society.

 

Studio Habits of Mind from Studio Thinking, Hetland, Winner, et al, Teachers College Press, 2007.

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