Developing creative thinking skills

Unless you know everything, what you need to know is thinking – Edward de Bono. The modern classroom is no longer a place of blackboards with children sitting docilely at their desks. These days, children are active participants in learning and teachers are their guides.

Fast learning and clear thinking are essential skills for children to succeed in the digital age in which we live. Children will need to develop an ability to master the volume of information available; critique its meaning and significance and then know how to use the information to develop creative solutions to problems or answers to questions.

Over the last decade, psychologists have made more discoveries about how the brain works and how we learn. A new focus for educators is to teach children how to learn and how to think, rather than what to think and what to learn.

Developing creative thinking skills and alternative ways of thinking will help strengthen children’s ability to cope with change. When thinking is more open ended and includes different perspectives, children can become more capable of adapting to change.

Edward de Bono is the leading authority in the field of creative thinking and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. His understanding of the brain as a self-organising system formed the basis of his practical tools for thinking. The ‘Six Thinking Hats’ strategy is one of the most widely used programs for the teaching of thinking across the world.

Six Thinking Hats requires students and teachers to extend their way of thinking about a topic by ‘wearing’ a range of different coloured hats. Each hat represents a separate mode of thinking. The purpose is to encourage students to reflect on their thinking and to recognise that different thinking is required in different learning situations.

White hat – the colour of neutrality – information available and needed

White hat is concerned with facts and figures. It is an objective look at data and information and distinguishes pure facts from interpretation.

• What information is available?
• What information do we need?
• What information is missing?

Note: all sides of disputed information are included

Yellow hat – the colour of sunshine – benefits and values

Yellow hat is concerned with logical positive benefits and strengths.

• What are the benefits? – give reasons why.
• What are the good things about this?
• How will this help us?
• Why will it work?

Black hat – the colour of caution and darkness – logical negative judgment and caution

• What could be the possible problems?
• What could some of the difficulties be?
• What are the points for caution?
• What are the risks/weaknesses?

Note: No solutions are required, just answers to the above.

Red hat – the colour of the heart – considers feelings and hunches

• How do I feel about this right now?
• Intuition, hunches and feelings are recognised and legitimised as a valid input into decision making.

Note: No justification is required for feelings or hunches

Green hat – the colour of growth – introduces new ideas and creative alternatives

• What are all the alternatives and possibilities?
• How can we overcome our black hat difficulties?
• Are there any other ways to do this?

Note: Need to go beyond the obvious, see a different outlook.

Blue hat – managing the thinking process – ensures all aspects of thinking have been considered

• Calls for the use of other hats
• Ensures the rules of the strategy are followed
• Summarises, overviews and concludes
• Asks for decisions, decides on the next step.

Supporting clear thinking

Often the main difficulty with thinking is that we try to do too much at once. It can be confusing and lead to feelings of helplessness and inadequacy. Juggling information, logic, creativity, hope, positives and negatives all at once can cloud thinking and make decision making difficult and confusing.

Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method helps to overcome the feelings of hopelessness, confusion and inadequacy by making clear use of one type of thinking at a time. It helps to reduce gut reactions and emotional responses that can lead to prejudices.

While the main aim is to support the decision making process, Six Thinking Hats can also be used as a reflective tool to encourage children to see and understand other points of view.

Classroom applications

Teachers across all year levels make use of Six Thinking Hats in a myriad of ways.  Children as young as four can easily identify the ‘good’ things, ‘bad’ things, feelings and new ideas about topics relevant to them.

For example, such simple concepts can be used to involve younger students in discussion and decision making about whether or not we should get a pet for our classroom.

Older children can use this thinking process for writing activities. Rather than writing a recount of an excursion, students can use the Six Thinking Hats to reflect on events or activities in which they have been involved.

Students often give reports on news items. Six Thinking Hats can be used to extend and develop understanding of events by discussing the issue using each separate mode of thinking.

Early childhood teacher Nicole Buckley says, ‘The use of Six Thinking Hats in early childhood classrooms encourages young children to look at issues from different perspectives. It opens up their thinking and gives them different ways of looking at things. We use it regularly to discuss books, stories, class issues and in our class meetings and discussion times.”

Six Thinking Hats helps students of all ages to recognise separate modes of thinking and to reflect on their own thought processes.  It can support students in the decision making process as well as help them to recognise that different thinking may be required in different learning situations.

Six Thinking Hats can be applied to many situations where brainstorming, problem solving or when lateral and creative thinking is required.

Future Skills

Queensland’s Griffith University graduate program indicates that good problem solving skills empower students in their educational, professional and personal lives.

It suggests that education needs to produce skilled thinkers and innovators that are able to keep pace with the rate of technological and economic change.  Authentic problem solving skills and the ability to use knowledge in innovative and creative ways will become essential.

Business Council of Australia and Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s report on Employability Skills for the Future indicates that there are many aspects of problem solving that are crucial to success in organisations.

Some of these include the ability to apply a range of strategies to problem solve; develop creative, innovative and practical solutions; and the application of problem solving strategies across a range of areas.

Problem solving along with creative thinking, decision making, generation of new ideas, analysis of information and the ability to plan for the future are all rapidly becoming essential skills for the future.  Six Thinking Hats is one program that can help support our children to begin to develop some of these essential skills.

He who learns but does not think is lost – Chinese proverb

By Adele Amorsen
 

This article was first published in Australian Family Magazine, May 2009. Updated July 2009.