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The Trust is founded by Jerry Rhodes to allow individuals at work, and families with children, to benefit from his research and teaching in ‘thinking about thinking’. This is known by academics as metacognition. It is derived from Greek: meta ‘above’, and Latin: cognition, ‘thinking’. In other words, you step outside the normal flow of thought to observe and understand ‘how you think’. Then you can modify, steer and grow your thinking to become more effective, at home and at work.
Jerry’s approach uniquely brings you Thinking-Intentions. They let you see what you are doing in your head and bring a special understanding of the place of imagination in your thinking.
Your Work: For the first time, the Trust is making available, directly to individuals, the Thinking-Intentions tools used in business and universities. If you have an appetite to expand your mind-skills then you are invited to look into the section For Work
Your Children: Thunkies are the magical cartoon characters that children love. They are the version of Thinking-Intentions designed especially for children. Thunkies are an entirely new and fresh way to bring metacognition, thinking about thinking, to parents, and indeed grandparents and even home schoolers.
Parents are the most important educators of their children. The Trust promotes activities for the family that, as much as possible, are real and physical. It can be hard for parents to achieve a healthy balance with screen time for their children, who don’t ever get their precious childhood back again. You can find out what’s on offer in the section For Families
Rhodes Effective Intelligence Trust has registered ‘Thunkies’ for trading because it’s short, memorable and specially for children and their parents.
But our Mission is for your work as well as your family. Drawing on Jerry’s experience as a schoolmaster, business leader and management consultant, the Trust is creating new learning materials both for Work and for Families.
Our Thunkies Team sends regular newsletters. They offer practical activities and information for both work and family to support your own exploration into metacognition.
Jerry has been researching and teaching for over forty years on how to make thinking work better, with businesses, universities and schools. This first arose because, as Head of Training in Rank Xerox he was looking into ‘creativity’ and discovered he was a prolific generator of ideas.
It made such a difference to his understanding that he founded his own consultancy. This led to the collaboration with Philips Eindhoven, and their joint investigations into creativity and metacognition.
Jerry published his first book in the 1980s to introduce metacognition for people at work. It proved such a success and so useful that its methodology, Effective Intelligence, is still being adopted by organisations on each continent and in seven languages, including Chinese.
Many people, who found Jerry’s teaching so helpful in their business life, have asked for it to be made available beyond the workplace.: “Why not at home?”. In order to do this, Jerry has established the educational Trust. Creativeness and how to foster it has been a leading force in what he has brought to organisations and he sees it as an essential skill for learning, at whatever age.
After Oxford and from his early career as schoolmaster, Jerry has always been keen on helping people make the most of their talents, especially children, who are growing the very foundations of their life. He has four children, grandchildren and many nephews and nieces.
Sue has worked alongside Jerry Rhodes for many years, assisting with the writing and design of his training materials and websites. She started out from university as a journalist; this experience equipped her with the editing and proof-reading skills to ensure that documents (nearly always) read well. Her training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique took her into the study and practices of changing habits of thinking and behaviour. As she started working with Jerry, she learned about the deep causes of thinking habits through his unique research.
Sam began working with Jerry soon after completing her degree in Graphic Design. Over the years she has assisted him in moving from print to an online format, and along the way she has developed formidable technical skills, enabling Jerry’s ideas to be presented to a wider audience via the web. After over 20 years she is still working with Jerry, which speaks a thousand words…
For family activities and your thinking skills