Into the Driver's Seat

Complex thinking isn't chaotic, nor is it linear.

by Ewan McIntosh

"Hexagonal Thinking is where either student or teacher writes key concepts on hexagonal cards, at the end of a period of learning, where the content behind each 'headline' is relatively clear to a team of learners. The students then place the cards together in the way that makes most sense to them - some ideas will connect to up to five others, others will lie at the end of a long sequential order, others still will appear in small outlying positions, on their own.

"In schools, we've seen it put to use by practitioners such as Chris Harte and David Didau. Harte has used the visual, tactical hexagons to help students see the complex connections between the various verb structures of the French language, and shared the thinking and impact of this in a TeachMeet presentation, "Why hexagons are better than squares".

"After a NoTosh workshop, Brisbane educator Elisabeth Hales used a simple set of cards to help students hone down on the key connections after a rich environmental immersion, as part of a design thinking project. Quickly, students were able to model to one another their different takes on what they had experienced and researched - no two hexagonal syntheses are the same."