ID207 Thinking Skills as a Core Graduate Capability at Keele

The Idea

This idea is inspired by the work of Edward de Bono and by thinking about the kind of education I would want for my own children to help them thrive in an increasingly complex and changing world. The proposal is to explicitly teach thinking skills - critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving as part of Keele’s curriculum. 

While universities aim and claim to develop these skills, evidence suggests they are most effective when taught directly rather than assumed to develop implicitly.  The majority of critical thinking teaching would remain integrated within the programme curriculum. What is proposed is to teach thinking skills in standalone sessions. Delivering this teaching outside the subject area would enable students to build more transferable, generic skills—particularly valuable for those who go on to careers beyond their discipline. Teaching these skills separately would also make them more visible, helping students to recognise and articulate what they have developed. This should reduce the risk of students overlooking or undervaluing the skills gained through embedded learning within their core subject teaching. An underpinning knowledge of thinking skills would aim to maximise the benefits of the various forms of thinking skills that are then integrated into the curriculum. 

De Bono’s thinking tools — such as Six Thinking Hats, lateral thinking, and structured perception tools — offer practical, accessible ways of developing these capabilities. They focus on how to think deliberately, flexibly, and creatively—skills applicable across disciplines, careers, and life contexts. Introducing these tools early and reinforcing them across programmes would enable students to approach complex problems more confidently, reflectively, and collaboratively. Their use in both education and business has been associated with improvements in attainment, clarity of thinking, creativity and decision making. This approach also supports student wellbeing by giving students tools to manage uncertainty, complexity, and disagreement—key challenges in higher education and beyond. 

These highly transferable tools support more inclusive participation in discussions, encourage awareness of different perspectives, and improve the quality of group work. A shared thinking framework would strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration, support inclusive teaching practices, and enhance students’ confidence in working with others. Making thinking skills explicit would allow Keele to systematise, assess, and showcase capabilities already valued by employers, including teamwork, creativity, negotiation, adaptability, and collaboration. 

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

Employers seek graduates with creative problem solving, decision making, and collaborative thinking. By explicitly teaching thinking as a skill, Keele can differentiate its graduates and strengthen its employability narrative. De Bono’s tools are evidence based, widely used in global organisations, and easily transferable beyond academia. A shared framework would also reduce siloed thinking between disciplines, support inclusive teaching practices, and improve the quality of seminars and group projects. Explicit instruction in thinking skills is strongly supported by educational research and international practice. The University of Malta demonstrates that embedding de Bono’s thinking tools at scale is both feasible and sustainable, offering Keele the opportunity to lead the UK sector in this space. 

How We Would Implement This Idea

All students could complete a core module in thinking skills, ideally in Year 1. Students could be drawn from across disciplines, bringing the added benefit of learning alongside peers from different subjects and gaining insight into different ways of thinking. If successful, the approach could be extended into later years. Individual disciplines could then adopt and apply the tools within subject content, demonstrating practical and contextual use. A pilot could begin in the foundation year or existing interdisciplinary programmes. If a credit bearing module was not possible then non-credit bearing sessions could be offered. Overall, this approach would be relatively low cost, adaptable, and effective across a wide range of disciplines.

What Success Would Look Like

Success would be visible in students confidently using a shared language of thinking in seminars, group work, and assessments. Students would show clearer reasoning, stronger creativity and more constructive collaboration. Teaching staff would see more inclusive discussions, stronger metacognitive awareness, better problem framing, decision making and group dynamics. At an institutional level, success would be reflected in graduate outcomes, employer feedback, and external recognition of Keele as a university that explicitly teaches thinking as a transferable and assessable skill. Over time, it would also be reflected in students choosing Keele for this distinctive offer and employers actively seeking out Keele graduates for their thinking capabilities.