Thinking Through Art

Visual Thinking Strategies is a student-centered teaching method developed by Visual Understanding in Education (VUE), an educational research group. The method uses art to build the capacity to observe, think, listen and communicate. The guiding principle is that self-discovery is a powerful way to learn, and that such self-directed learning is stimulated by discussion among peers.

Background and research

VTS is one of the most respected art education teaching methods in the country, frequently cited at professional conferences. The VTS method is utilized in dozens of art museums and schools across the country and in Europe.

VTS is the result of collaboration between cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and veteran museum educator Philip Yenawine. For over 30 years, Abigail Housen, a Harvard-trained educator and psychologist, has conducted empirical research exploring how viewers, experienced and novice, think when looking at art objects. Philip Yenawine, former Director of Education at MoMA and NAEA Museum Educator of the Year (2000), has taught and implemented VTS in urban and rural settings, with disadvantaged populations, and across languages and cultures.

VTS was field-tested for over twelve years at many sites in the US and abroad, and is the subject of much independent research. Research findings are detailed in reports and articles (www.vue.org).

How does it work?

In a typical VTS lesson, students:

•   Look carefully at a work of art.
•   Talk about what they observe.
•   Back up their ideas with evidence.
•   Listen to and consider the views of others.
•   Discuss multiple interpretations.

Why art?

Thinking about art, or aesthetic thought, is rich and complex.

•    Art’s subjects cover age-old stories often addressing universal human concerns and conditions.
•    Art’s subjects transcend economic and cultural boundaries.
•    Art is intentionally ambiguous, open to a variety of valid interpretations.
•    Feelings are embedded in art along with information, triggering a full range of expression from those who look at it thoughtfully.
•    Layers of meaning, symbols, and metaphor encourage probing and reflecting in young people, as they do in adults.

The VTS curriculum is compromised of works of art and put into careful order (as one might select books for young readers) to give students a chance to use what they know and to figure out what they don’t.