Off the Beaten Path: Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats
Hall Houston, Taiwan
Hall Houston has many years of teaching experience at universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. His first book, The Creative Classroom, was published in 2007 by Lynx Publishing (www.lynxpublishing.com). He is currently working on his second book. His professional interests include cross-cultural communication, discourse analysis, creativity and critical thinking. E-mail: hallhouston@yahoo.com
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Introduction
Thinking hats
Handouts
Posters
Chairs
Index cards
More…
Six thinking hats is a popular creativity exercise used to promote discussion and the exchange of ideas. This technique encourages participants to look at a problem from various points of view. It was created by Edward de Bono in the early 80's.
Start with a topic. This could be a problem (something going on in your class or a local or even a world issue). Alternatively, it could be a suggestion or an idea.
Ask students to generate ideas about the topic in six categories:
White hat: information. White hat thinking is about sharing the facts about a subject.
Red hat: intuition. Red hat thinking involves expressing your emotions, gut reaction, or instinctive response.
Black hat: negative thinking. Black hat thinking represents the dangers involved, all of the negative consequences.
Yellow hat: positive thinking. Yellow hat thinking includes all the good features of the topic.
Green hat: creativity. Green hat thinking is creative thinking and speculation.
Blue hat: overview or the big picture. Blue hat thinking is all about how the discussion is going and how it should be organized. According to de Bono, meetings should begin and end with blue hat thinking.
Participants are encouraged to change between different types of thinking throughout the meeting.
Here are a number of different formats that can be used for six thinking hats.
Give participants a handout with explanations of the different hats and room for notes. Give them a few minutes to write their ideas down. Then put them in pairs to discuss. Finally ask each pair to summarize their discussion.
Another format is to put large sheets of papers on the wall, each one with a drawing of a different hat on it and a brief written description of the type of thinking associated with it. Invite students to walk around and jot a few notes on the posters. Then you can walk around and read out some of the notes to generate discussion.
Before class, arrange six chairs at the front of the classroom facing the class. Put a piece of colored paper that corresponds with each thinking hat on the chairs. Ask students to think about the topic in silence for a few minutes. Then invite students to come and sit in the appropriate chair and tell the class their ideas. If students are slow to respond, you can call on students.
Give each student 6 index cards. Tell them to write a different hat on each card. Give them a few minutes to write some ideas on each card. Next, collect the cards and shuffle them. Put students in groups of 3 or 4 and give each student 6 cards. Tell the groups to take turns reading out a card, then asking another student to respond to it. End the activity with a summary of the discussion from each group.
For more information about six thinking hats, I recommend you find a copy of Edward de Bono’s book, Six Thinking Hats. Also, these websites have more information about the technique:
Wikipedia – de Bono Hats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bono_Hats
Mind Tools – Six Thinking Hats
www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm
Six Thinking Hats – summarized by Sylvie Labelle
http://members.optusnet.com.au/charles57/Creative/Techniques/sixhats.htm
Teachnet.com - Classroom Management - Six Thinking Hats
www.teachnet.com/how-to/manage/sixhats120800.html
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
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