In their book Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education, authors Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner discuss how the arts can promote the following ten habits of mind:

Develop Craft: Learning to use and care for tools (e.g., viewfinders, brushes), materies (e.g., charcoal, paint) & learning artistic conventions (e.g., perspective, color mixing)

Engage & Persist: Learning to embrace problems of relevance within the art world and/or of personal importance, to develop focus and other mental states conducive to working and prservering at art 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: Qestion & Explain-Learning to think and talk with others about an aspect of one’s work or working process

Evaluate: Learning to judge one’s own work and working process and the work of others in relation to standards of the field

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

Understand the Art World: Learning about art history and current practice

Build Communities: Learning to interact as an artist with other artists (i.e., in classrooms, in local arts organizations, and acros the art field) and within the broader society

What would you add to the 10 lessons or 8 habits of mind that arts education provides?

Sandy Taylor
Arts Education Director, Monmouth Arts