WHAT IS IT, AND HOW IS IT USEFUL? The blue hat is used to manage thinking processes. The importance of strengthening students metacognitive skills is emphasised by McInerney & McInerney (2005), who describe the significant impact that facilitating students’ reflection on their learning can have on their motivation and self-efficacy (p. 112-115).

ACTIVITY IDEA: To conclude this mini unit, students should return to their original illustrations, showing their two different emotional responses to sources discussing refugees. The teacher should then instruct students to consider how their thinking about refugees has changed over the unit. They will be holding the physical iteration of their initial emotional responses, but hopefully they will have moved beyond these gut responses through their use of critical thinking, knowledge building, and problem solving skills in these lessons. Their task is to write a reflection on how their thinking has changed。 The teacher should provide guiding questions such as “what have you learnt over this unit? What is different about your thinking to what you thought when you created those pictures? What made you think in a different way?”

LINKS TO SYLLABUS: The values and attitudes focus of HSIE revolves around creating learners who think critically about important issues in their world. Asking students to think critically about how their ideas have changed is an essential step towards creating critical thinkers, and this critical reflection upon society starts with the self.