Critical Thinking: de Bono’s 6-Hat strategy

“Those who know how to think need no teachers.” —Mahatma Gandhi Specific Lesson: The 21st Century demands these sorts of critical thinking skills more than ever before “Those who know how to think need no teachers.” —Mahatma Gandhi "If everyone is thinking the same way, nobody is really thinking" —George Patton “If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”—George Orwell The final quote is the most directly relevant. The podcast is excellent too – someone proposes an “imagine the world if…” point for 60 seconds, then an expert panel debates it for 5 minutes. “Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven.”—Edward De Bono “The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who can't read or write, but those who can't learn, unlearn and relearn” John Toffler

Six-Hats Technique So how are we going to develop our critical thinking skills in this PSHCE unit? Many major international organisations use this technique for problem solving. Each ‘hat’ represents a completely different way of thinking In groups we will ask members to ‘put on’ different hats in a sequence to aid the problem solving process This can help overcome the problem of each group member adopting random positions at random times It also permits us to control people who insist of sticking to one perspective - we can ask them to assume a different hat

Edward de Bono What is the background to this approach? Edward de Bono has written 56 books with translations in 34 languages. He was born in Malta, won a scholarship to Oxford University and has worked at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard. Dr de Bono is the originator of the term 'lateral thinking' which now has an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. He is regarded as the leading international authority in the direct teaching of thinking as a skill.

Six-Hats Technique