There are some specific techniques to help you explore topics from differ- ent angles and these can be a fruitful way to kick-start the critical thinking process! The techniques outlined here are:
1. Six Thinking Hats 2. Visual representations 3. SWOT 4. Adopting persona 5. Metaphor 6. Brainstorming 7. Consequences.
DeBono (1986) developed this approach, which can be used in groups or alone, in order to help people explore a topic from different perspectives.
Imagine you have six different coloured hats – white, black, yellow, green, blue and red. Each hat represents a different attitudinal predisposition, or a different way of looking at the topic, and each of the coloured hats is worn in turn.
This is what the hats stand for:
• White hat: The white hat is neutral. Here you examine the facts, data and the trends, without emotion. How can they be explained?
• Black hat: This is the pessimistic hat. Here you try your best to find prob- lems, disadvantages and difficulties.
• Yellow hat: The yellow hat stands for optimism, benefits and pluses. When wearing the yellow hat you delight in identifying the benefits associated with the topic.
• Green hat: The green hat looks for different, fresh new ways of approaching the topic. How else might it be explored? What hasn’t yet been considered?
• Red hat: This is the emotional hat. How do you feel about the topic? What is your intuition telling you? The red hat captures instant reactions, hunches and emotions.
• Blue hat: This is the summary hat. The blue hat is the ‘chairperson’ who pulls all the points of view together and evaluates and prioritises them. Six Thinking Hats
Consciously wearing the different hats in turn can help you avoid unbal- anced thinking, and ensure that you do try to view your iceberg from all angles.
TOP TIP
The Six Hats technique is also useful in group-work as it helps to ensure that different points of view are represented, something that is particularly useful in groups where there is one forceful point of view. It can also help to prevent personality clashes since different points of view are raised under the ‘hat’ rather than attributed personally.
We’ve mentioned this technique before in chapter 8.
Summarise your knowledge of a topic as a mindmap or flow diagram. Seeing a summary of the ‘whole picture’ will help you identify ‘loose connections’, any gaps that need filling or general trouble spots. Think of this as building your own personal iceberg!
Drawing out what you know in this way also helps to ensure that you won’t forget any component when systematically applying the critical thinking questions in chapter 10.
SWOT is another well-known technique, which you may have used before. The aim is to generate a range of ideas about a topic using the four head- ings Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. You generate the ideas by asking: ‘What are the strengths (weaknesses, opportunities or threats) that accompany this topic or debate?’
There are only two rules:
1. Every idea you have is written down and nothing is censored.
2. You only begin to evaluate the ideas when no more can be generated. Visual representations
As with Six Hats, this is a technique you can use by yourself or with others. When used in a group you are more likely to generate richer or more diverse ideas.
LOOKING AHEAD
SWOT, along with PEST, is also a popular business tool, PEST, or STEP as it is also known, follows the same principles as SWOT, but ideas are generated by asking ‘What are the political, economic, social and technological fac- tors that accompany this topic or debate?’ It is possible for the ideas generated in a PEST and a SWOT to overlap.
This activity is similar to Six Thinking Hats, although here you place yourself in specific roles. For example, when studying the topic of Social Policy
and Healthcare you might systematically place yourself in the roles of Nye Bevan, CEO of a private healthcare company, a pensioner on state benefit and leader of the two main political parties. What would each of these have to say about public policy around healthcare? And how would they justify their viewpoints?
Once again this is a technique that can be used individually or in groups. It can be used as a debating tool, in which group members debate according to the role they have adopted.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) stated that:
‘Most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have
found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.’
(p. 3) Adopting different persona
They stated that people learn through making comparisons, and it is the resulting metaphors that drive subsequent thoughts and behaviours. The meta- phors we use can help us to clarify topics, gain greater understandings, generate new ideas and resolve problems (Fernandez-Duque & Johnson 1999, Alty et al. 2000).
Metaphors can also restrict our learning. Chew and Laubichler (2003) argue that while the simplicity of many scientific metaphors is what gives them intuitive appeal, they can also lead to troubling misunderstandings. Similarly metaphor can affect our ‘world view’. Lakoff (1991), for example, analysed the language used to support the proposed Gulf War. When oil is described as a ‘lifeline’, he argues, wealth then becomes synonymous with health, and we all want to be healthy?
You may have noticed other references to consciously using and being aware of metaphor in this book (see chapter 3 and chapter 9).
TRY THIS
What metaphors are used in your own subject? How do they direct your thinking? Can you introduce a new metaphor? How well does it work? Can you introduce a ‘forced’ metaphor? Try asking yourself, for example, How is X like . . . a hair dressing salon . . . a zoo . . . or a jungle? How well does the metaphor work?
This is the ‘traditional’ and still widely used way of exploring a topic. It’s attributed to Alex Osborn in the 1960s although there are many variants on his original model. Brainstorming was originally a group attempt to find solutions to problems by allowing everyone to express ideas their spontaneously.
Individuals can also use it to explore topics in a more general way – for example everything you know, feel and believe about a topic. Like SWOT, the aim of brainstorming is to generate as many ideas as possible, without evaluation or censorship.
Ideas are only evaluated once no more can be generated and, as with SWOT, ideas need not be owned or endorsed by the person who suggests them. Variations on simple brainstorming are also possible (Richard 2003, McFadzean 1998).
DANGER!
Brainstorming has been criticised for:
• not allowing sufficient time for idea generation • moving on to evaluation too quickly
• not evaluating!
Because brainstorming is so widely used it is often in danger of being used too casually, As with any tool, it is only as good as the person using it. Allow ample time to brainstorm and stick to the rules!
TOP TIP
Try brainstorming on post-it notes. When you come to review your ideas you can physically move them round and arrange them under different themes.
In this technique you write out everything you know about the issue in separate statements. Then for each statement pose the question. . . . ‘And the conse- quence is?’ You continue posing this question until you can go no further. Let’s look at how this technique might work if we wanted to explore Freud’s belief in unconscious motivations.
Q. What is the consequence of this?
A. The theory is difficult to test empirically.
Q. What is the consequence of being difficult to test?
A. It will have less appeal to experimental psychologists.
Q. What is the consequence of having less appeal to experimental
psychologists?
A. Since the dominant paradigm is experimental psychology, then psycho- analysis may not be well respected among other psychologists.
Q. What is the consequence of not being respected?
A. Freudian psychologists might become marginalised within psychology.
Q. What is the consequence of being marginalised?
A. Psychoanalysis may be ignored or overlooked by the psychological estab- lishment, etc.
The aim is to progress your thinking to a stage that you might not normally reach through continual probing.
If you are using any of the above techniques by yourself we recommend that you try to have fun with them and enjoy them – particularly those that allow you to exercise your imagination! By allowing yourself to play with ideas in a non-threatening, ‘lets see where this takes me’ sort of way, you can make your own meanings and engage with the subject in a new way.
And don’t worry if you find yourself sitting and daydreaming for a while – you will be in good company. Einstein also claimed that ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’ and the story goes that the theory of rela- tivity developed from a time when he sat in the sun and ‘daydreamed’ about taking a ride on a sunbeam!
Feeling positive has itself been associated with improved performance in problem-solving. So all the more reason to relax and enjoy? (Isen et al. 1987).
SUMMARY
The mindmap opposite, figure 9.2, summarises the ideas in this chapter. The techniques in this chapter should help you to explore and get to grips with new concepts and ideas. They should make you better equipped to under- take the more systematic and rigorous critical analysis that is described in the next chapter.
IT WORKED FOR ME
‘Probably one that you’ve heard before, but it works. Try carrying a “thought notebook” around with you and jotting down ideas or insights as soon as they occur to you. I used to promptly forget my flashes of inspiration but now I write them down straight away and can return to them later.’
Consequences Brainstorming Metaphor Adopting persona SWOT Visual representations
Six Thinking Hats
Changing over time?
Different ways to approach it?
Unknown content?
Assignments and projects
To check what you understand
To see things differently
To challenge your thinking
Relax and enjoy
Seeing things differently
Seeing things differently: techniques
Is your subject an iceberg?
Take a questioning
approach
Figure 9.2