There is a diagram that I often use to help teachers understand where the Habits of Mind "fit" in relation to other parts of the curriculum. This diagram shows the relationship between the content we teach, the thinking skills students need to develop, the Habits of Mind and the values we try to impart to students.

Essentially the relationship is this.

Content: We will always need to teach content to students. We need something to think about and therefor thinking can never be taught in isolation. Additionally we have to recognize that there is 'stuff' that is worth knowing about the world that children have to experience, understand and be able to do in order to understand the world we live in. The content forms the centre of our curriculum

Thinking Skills, Tools and Strategies
In addition to the content, we need a way of interacting with the content. This is where thinking skills come in. We teach students how to analyze, how to create and how to use tools like the 6 thinking hats. We teach them these skills in order that they are able to interact with the content, evaluate it, manipulate it, participate with it and make use of it. However, it has been the experience of many teachers that even though we teach students these skills, tools and strategies, they don't always get used.

Habits of Mind
Habits of Mind are dispositions. A tendency to behave in a certain way. They are what incline us towards selecting particular tools so we can interact with our content. Without these dispositions we might have mastered the tools, but we aren't inclined to use them. This has been an important part of the "thinking curriculum" that has been largely neglected over recent years as schools have focused on the teaching of tools and strategies.

Values / Principals
Our values and principals are what give purpose to our dispositions. They drive us to employ our dispositions in particular directions. Many people we would view as criminals have highly developed Habits of Mind, are very skillful thinkers and know their content very well. They simply apply these in a way we would argue has a negative impact on our communities. Our values / principals / ethics / virtues are what give us purpose to lives, so we can employ the Habits of Mind in a meaningful and directed way, to select appropriate tools and strategies to act on our content.

As teachers it is important that as we select our content, we do it in a way that allows us access to these values and principals. That our curriculum and pedagogy allow us to develop the Habits of Mind, and that we also teach the skills and strategies students need to interact with this content.

I've attached an article that I wrote some years ago about this that might be of interest to some of you. Also, there is a poster that represents this relationship in the store. http://www.mindfulbydesign.com/product/thinking-curriculum-poster

I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on these relationships.