Right Mental Attitude
Three attitudes Dewey identified for reflective thinking
| Attitude | What it means |
|---|---|
| Open-mindedness | Remaining open to multiple, alternative possibilities; questioning routine and practice |
| Responsibility | Owning the consequences of action and willing to act on what reflection reveals |
| Whole-heartedness | Bringing genuine engagement to the work, not going through the motions |
Why open-mindedness is the most significant
It enables the other two. Without openness, responsibility hardens into rigid rules and whole-heartedness narrows into stubborn commitment.
The reflective practitioner does not believe in one single truth or in one right way to teach.
The provisional model named four components and five meta-competences. None of them work without something that sits underneath them: the right mental attitude. Dewey, working in the early twentieth century, identified three attitudes that have to be present for reflective thinking to happen at all.
The three are open-mindedness, responsibility, and whole-heartedness. Open-mindedness is the most significant, because the other two depend on it.
Why attitude matters before method
A teacher can read every model of reflective practice and still not reflect well. The models give structure. Without the right mental attitude, the structure is empty.
This is one of the harder lessons in this field. Reflection is not a checklist. It is something the teacher does, with whatever attitude they bring. A defensive teacher running Gibbs’s cycle produces defensive reflection in the shape of Gibbs’s cycle. A closed-minded teacher running double-loop learning produces closed-minded conclusions framed as double-loop learning.
The attitude is the precondition. The method is the form.
Open-mindedness
Open-mindedness is the ability to remain open to multiple, alternative possibilities. It refers to the mental willingness to entertain explanations and approaches other than the ones the teacher already favours.
Open-mindedness has several practical features.
It questions routine and practice
The open-minded teacher continuously questions routine and practice for their validity and value. Things that have been done the same way for years are not exempt from questioning. The familiar gets re-examined.
This is uncomfortable. Most routines exist because they save effort. Questioning them costs effort. The open-minded teacher pays that cost regularly.
It does not believe in a single right way to teach
For reflection to happen, the teacher must hold certain values and beliefs about learning that allow reflection to do its work. The most important is the belief that there is no single truth and no single right way to teach.
This sounds modest. In practice it is rare. Most teachers are trained inside a particular tradition and absorb its assumptions. Many remain inside that tradition for life and treat its assumptions as obvious. The open-minded teacher resists this, not by abandoning what they know but by holding it loosely enough that other approaches can also be considered.
It develops new ways of knowing and reasoning
Over time, the open-minded teacher develops new ways of knowing and patterns of reasoning. They do not stop using the old ways, but they add new ones. Their thinking becomes more flexible.
A teacher whose thinking is rigid produces rigid lessons. A teacher whose thinking is flexible can respond to what the lesson actually requires.
Why open-mindedness is the most significant
Open-mindedness is the most significant of the three attitudes because the other two depend on it.
Responsibility, without open-mindedness, becomes rigid duty. A responsible but closed-minded teacher takes ownership of doing the wrong thing well and accepts no information that suggests changing course.
Whole-heartedness, without open-mindedness, becomes stubborn commitment. A whole-hearted but closed-minded teacher pours energy into what they already do and ignores signals that something else might be needed.
When open-mindedness is in place, the other two attitudes have something to engage with. A responsible and open-minded teacher takes ownership of acting on what the reflection reveals, even when that means changing what they have been doing. A whole-hearted and open-minded teacher engages fully with the new direction once the reflection has shown it is needed.
Responsibility
Responsibility is the willingness to own the consequences of one’s actions and to act on what reflection reveals. It has two parts.
Ownership of consequences
A responsible teacher does not blame outside factors when something goes wrong. Students were tired, the curriculum is bad, the parents do not support learning, the school provides no resources. All of these may be true, and none of them remove the teacher’s own role.
Ownership does not mean self-blame. It means a clear-eyed recognition of what the teacher did contribute, distinct from what other factors contributed. The reflective practitioner can hold this distinction without collapsing it.
Willingness to act on what reflection reveals
The harder half of responsibility is acting on what the reflection shows. It is one thing to write in a journal that a method needs to change. It is another to actually change it the next morning.
This is where reflection becomes practice instead of journaling. Without this step, responsibility is a feeling. With this step, it is a behaviour.
Whole-heartedness
Whole-heartedness is bringing genuine engagement to the work. It is the opposite of going through the motions.
A whole-hearted teacher cares about whether students are learning. Their reflection is honest because it matters to them. Their teaching has energy because they are present.
Whole-heartedness is hard to fake. Students can tell, often quickly, whether their teacher is genuinely engaged or just running the curriculum.
It is also hard to sustain. Many teachers begin whole-hearted and become numb over years. The numbness shows up as routine, lowered expectations, and a sense that the work is something to be got through.
Reflection helps maintain whole-heartedness in two ways.
- It surfaces what matters. Reflective practice keeps the teacher in contact with the reasons they teach. When the reasons stay visible, engagement is easier to maintain.
- It reveals what is draining engagement. When numbness is setting in, reflection can name what is causing it: a particular class, a particular policy, a particular kind of week. Naming the cause is the first move toward addressing it.
Open-mindedness, responsibility, whole-heartedness. Open-mindedness is most significant because the other two depend on it.
Open-mindedness allows the teacher to consider alternative views and to question routine. Without it, responsibility hardens into rigid duty and whole-heartedness narrows into stubborn commitment. Open-mindedness keeps both flexible and useful.
What this means for a teacher in their daily work
The three attitudes are not abstract. They show up in small daily moments.
Open-mindedness shows up when a colleague suggests something different. The closed teacher dismisses it. The open teacher considers it, even if they ultimately decide the suggestion does not fit.
Responsibility shows up when a lesson goes wrong. The unresponsible teacher looks for someone or something to blame. The responsible teacher names what they themselves did and what they will change.
Whole-heartedness shows up when a teacher walks into a class on a tired Wednesday. The teacher going through the motions delivers the same lesson with reduced energy. The whole-hearted teacher finds something in the lesson worth caring about and brings genuine attention to it.
These moments add up. A career of small open-minded choices, small acts of responsibility, and small acts of whole-hearted engagement produces a different teacher than a career of their absence.
The good news is that the attitudes can be cultivated. They are not fixed traits. A teacher who notices when they are being closed-minded, who deliberately practises responsibility, who works to keep engagement alive, becomes more reflective over time, even if the start was modest.