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Education Forum on Teaching Thinking Skills Report

Personal Experiences

Heather Forrest, Newmains Primary School

Heather Forrest, a primary teacher, who was introduced to thinking skills while on a teacher exchange visit to Australia, gave a personal view of her experiences.

Aim

Heather Forrest described how she was introduced to the concept of teaching thinking skills during her year abroad. The aims of the session were to:

The context

Heather Forrest explained that the de Bono programme was one of a range of innovative approaches introduced in the private Australian school in which she had taught. It aimed to address concerns with pupils' attitudes and achievement. An initial assessment indicated that the school needed to find ways to help children take more responsibility for their own learning and to know more about how they think. The strategy was an attempt to teach thinking without indoctrination; to deal with issues of concern to pupils and to look, in particular, at issues of boys' under achievement.

The programme

The Six Thinking Hats approach is designed to focus children's attention on different types of thinking about problems. It associates each type of thinking, for example, negative, positive, factual, imaginative, with a different coloured hat. The hats are:

Children were encouraged to say which hat they were wearing, and also to vary their hats, as they addressed problems in undertaking their work in the classroom. This not only provides a framework for introducing children to ways of thinking but encourages them to reflect on their own thinking.

Planning and implementation

Heather went on to describe the planning in which her exchange school engaged in order to support the implementation of the Six Hats Programme. The headteacher and reading recovery teacher underwent training in the approach and acquired supporting materials. They then led whole-school training for the staff. Implementation began with a 'readiness' level of the programme during which children were introduced to the different kinds of thinking and the use of open and closed questions and statements. 'Show and tell' offered opportunities to practise these developing skills. Only when this stage had been established were the Six Thinking Hats formally introduced.

Initially the class concentrated on only one coloured hat or type of thinking at a time. At a later stage, groups within the same class were assigned a different hat and asked to report back from the perspective of the 'hat' they were 'wearing'. This was followed by groups rotating through the different types of thinking in order to practise the skills involved.

Personal views

Did this method work and can it be transferred to Scottish schools? Heather Forrest explained that as she had been on an exchange visit, she left while the implementation was still underway. However, subsequent contact with the Australian school had provided her with feedback on progress. At the end of four years, 'readiness' activities were an established part of teaching and learning in years 1 and 2. Hats were used in years 3 to 6 and a Lipman-based philosophy¹ programme was being introduced in year 7 and carried through into the senior school. Children seemed to enjoy the programmes and find them useful; parents were now familiar with the language which had been shared with them. However, the school felt it was still too early to judge the long-term effects of these approaches to learning.

Heather's personal view is that the Six Thinking Hats Programme is a 'fun way' to focus on thinking and also a way of involving the whole community in learning. She was, however, convinced that success hinges on teachers' skills and commitment, and stressed that the Australian school supported the implementation with in-service training on co-operative learning techniques. In her current school she was finding it difficult to replicate her experiences without the necessary resources or the whole-school approach which had supported her exchange visit. She did, however, believe that elements of the approach could be introduced into circle time and that staff meetings would also benefit from examining the ways in which staff address issues using different ways of thinking.

¹Lipman, M. (1999) Thinking in Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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