De bono’s six thinking hats

De bono’s six thinking hats

Edward de Bono’s structured thinking strategy six thinking hats (1985) is recognized in education as an effective technique to engage students in critical and creative thinking. Introduce students to this technique of thinking and give them lots of practice using it. Apply six thinking Hats to developing questions for specific purposed.

Six thinking hats

Ø  White hat- the neutral hat. White hat thinking identifies the facts and details of a topic.

Ø  Black hat- the judgemental hat. Black hat thinking examines the negative aspects of a topic.

Ø  Yellow hat- the optimistic hat. Yellow hat thinking focuses on the positive and logical aspects of a topic

Ø  Red hat- the intuitive hat. Red hat thinking looks at a topic from the point of view of emotions and feelings.

Ø  Green hat- the new ideas hat. Green hat thinking requires imagination and lateral.

Ø  Blue hat- the metacognition hat. Blue hat thinking encompasses and reflects on all the other hats looking at the big picture.

Current events

Post or project a current-event headline and summary for students to read. Instruct student to create six questions about the current event on the six thinking hats organizer. If your choose to use this strategy as daily bell work, focus on a different hat each day.

Documentary response

As students view and review a documentary about a curriculum related issue or event. Have them keep track of their questions using the six thinking hats organizer.

Jigsaw

As students prepare to select a focus for research, have them process their ideas by working in thinking hat groups, developing questions that meet the criteria for their assigned hat jigsaw students in groups, developing questions that meet the criteria for their assigned hat. Jigsaw students in groups of six so each group has a representative of each hat. Instruct students to share questions and select/develop those that would be effective research questions.

Literature circles

Assign students questioning roles based on the six thinking hats. Each day students take a different thinking hat role and develop questions for literature circle discussions.

Six thinking hats

Create questions about your topic to represent each type of thinking

White hat: facts and details                            black hat: examines the negative

Yellow hat: focuses on the positive                red hat: emotions and feelings

Green hat: requires imagination                      blue hat: focuses on reflection

Using six hats thinking in brainstorming

Edward de bone identified a way to develop a more structure form of brainstorming. Where one thinking mode is used at a time. The six hats, with colours in the sequence in which they guide a group to a solution are identified in table.

In a brainstorm these thinking modes can be taken one at a time, to enable a more focused approach to brainistorming. Particularly if a group is having difficulties with generating ideas have been quite conventional you could say “Now try wearing your green hat, what creative

White	Pure facts, figures and information
Red	Feeling, emotions, intuition
Black	Devil’s advocate’ negative judgement, what can go wrong?
Yellow	Brightness and optimism, positive constructive comments
Green	Creative, provocative, lateral thinking
Blue	Overview, summarizing, what to take forward.

Ideas can you come up with? It also a group to think in a different way: for example ‘green’ thinking allows them to be more daft and playful, without fear of ridicule by other; ‘red’ gives permission for some emotional issues to be raised, or maters which may not usually be allowed to surface in the work context: ‘white’ allows a group which has become emotionally attached to and stuck with some ideas t draw on facts, figures and more concrete information to explore these further., in the evaluative stage following a brainstorm: ‘black’ allows for critical points to be vocalized, which may normally be suppressed to avoid being seen as a ‘kill joy’. And may stop the development of ‘groupthink’.

Another way the ‘six thinking hats’ can be used is to separate a larger group into smaller ones, each charged with a  different mode of thinking. Alternatively, the six thinking hats can be used to take the ideas from brainstorming and evaluate and reflect further ont hem. For example getting a green group to generate ideas, pass them on to a white group to explore facts and figures and information about the ideas, then to a black group to explore why the ideas may not work, then on to a yellow group to think of ways round the problems identified or to think of constructive ways to build up the ideas left, and finally a blue group to summarise where the groups have got to with the ideas. Some ideas may be rejected by the black group, others developed by both the white and yellow group may develop into possible course of action.

Mind map

Mind maping has great creative potential. Mind mapping is drawn from the work of tony buzan in the 1970s. It is a technique, not an end in itself. Its aim is to help us learn non-linearly and take a whole brain approach. Over time the technique has been refined and in 1995 mind map was recorded as a registered trademark of the Buzan Corporation. However, there are a number of variants- for example it is sometimes called a ‘spider gram’

Definition of a mind map

A mind map or spider gram is a whole brain, pictorial and associative way to capture thoughts and ideas on a problem.

Method

An example of a mind map is outlined below. This is a mind related to this chapter.

Ideally you would have an A3 sized piece of paper, to provide space for the imagination. You start in the centre, the middle of the sheet, not the left-hand corner as is usual. You can use different coloured pens to represent different parts of the map, as colour is associated with the long-term memory and is linked to creativity.

Draw a picture at the centre of the sheet to represent your problem, such as a balloon, a light bulb or exclamation mark, and circle it to separate it from the text, for example by a picture frame a cloud or plain circle

Start at the centre with the focal point or problem, lie the solar plexus, then move out with associations and linkages, writing with keywords.