Using the Six-Hat Thinking Technique to Facilitate Pre-service Teachers' Learning of Instructional Design in a Flipped Classroom

Instructional design is a critical learning content for pre-service teachers which requires not only the in-depth knowledge of instructional design models but also creativity. Although a large amount of current research has focused on improving pre-service teachers' learning of instructional design, knowledge of how to facilitate their creativity in instructional design is still limited. De Bono's six-hat thinking technique, in which six hats are composed of six different thinking hats representing six different thinking directions respectively, has been utilized to improve staff's creativity in business. While the studies in other disciplines have analyzed the effectiveness of the six-hat thinking technique and has proved it to be beneficial for developing creativity, it has been rarely used in education. Considering its potential to facilitate pre-service teachers' creativity in instructional design, this study explored how the six-hat thinking technique was used in the pre-service teachers' learning of instructional design in a flipped classroom course. Epidemic network analysis was used to analyze the pre-service teachers' online discussions. The results show that the pre-service teachers focused on creative thinking (green hat), were active in sharing their individual ideas (red hat), and provided positive suggestions with regards to others' ideas (yellow hat) during teamwork. The findings of this study could be applied in the teaching and learning of instructional design as it enriches the applications of the six-hat thinking technique into teacher education in a more efficient manner and offers a new way to improve the pre-service teachers' creativity and learning efficiency.