8 Studio Habits of Mind (SHoM)

At Art With Susan, we look to the SHoM, identified by Harvard's Project Zero, to inform our best practices in the art room. As students create in our Open Studio format, they are naturally absorbing and practicing these 21st Century skills. The skills highlighted in the Habits transfer easily to situations outside the art room as they are adaptable to any learning situation.

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 and 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 a creator with other creators and within the broader society. Arts here can easily be switched with other disciplines, like science or history.

Here is a great page that explains further:
https://www.artcorelearning.org/studio-habits-of-mind