The Six Thinking Hats (affiliate link) is a book written by Edward de Bono in which he lays out a practical method that expands on the very simple concept of thinking. Since its publication a decade ago, several teachers and educators worldwide have adopted Edward’s thinking approach with success. The Six Thinking Hats can be used with students in class to enhance their thinking and decision making skills.
For De Bono, intelligence is the potential of the human brain and thinking is the skill to tap into this potential. In order for kids and students to better benefit from the potential of their brains, they need to be taught the skill of thinking. To this end, De Bono puts forward this uniquely positive approach to unscramble the thinking process:
- White hat: neutral and objective, concerned with facts and figures
- Read hat: the emotional view
- Black hat: careful and cautious, the “devil’s advocate” hat
- Yellow hat: sunny and positive
- Green hat: associated with fertile growth, creativity, and new ideas
- Blue hat: the color of the sky, above everything else.
One of the important aspects of De Bono’s work is the use of the power of colour as a way to help move our thinking and therefore influence behaviour.
To bring you close to the concept of the Six Thinking Hats, I am sharing with you this awesome poster to use in class:
I tried hard to locate a link to the page where the owner of this poster first published it but I could not find it. Unfortunately, for the full version of the poster you need to contact the owner mcquaig.com .
