The Thinking Hats teaching strategy: Potential benefits to advance metacognitive self-directed learning

Abstract

This chapter reports on the findings of a qualitative phenomenological study with a heterogeneous group of willing first- to fourth-year pre-service teachers from a South African University (n = 450). The participants were representative of different subject fields and received purposeful exposure to training as part of professional development in four classroom-based teaching strategies to encourage the development of metacognitive self-directed learning (SDL). The project engaged pre-service teachers as self- responsible and self-directed initiators of change to their teaching practices to become effective self-directed adult students. Furthermore, the chapter explores the pre-service teachers' written reflections about their experiences with the professional development training and, in particular for this chapter, their perceptions about the project's potential benefits for advancing metacognitive self-regulated learning. The findings revealed that exposure to the Six Thinking Hats strategy holds benefits for equipping pre-teachers with a variety of thinking skills and dispositions to advance metacognitive awareness and, to a limited extent, metacognitive regulation through problem-solving to self-direct learning.