Company Profile
Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)
Company Overview
OUR VISION - Imagine classrooms where every teacher uses the power of visual art to guide students in engaging conversations. Every student’s perspective is valued and builds deeper thinking and understanding. All students are actively participating in their learning. They learn from one another, respect each other, listen and appreciate that there are multiple ways to see any given situation. Our students are curious, lifelong learners and thoughtful citizens contributing to our diverse and changing world.
OUR MISSION - Our mission is to transform the ways in which teachers teach and students learn. We utilize a unique approach based in theory and research that uses the discussion of visual art to significantly increase student engagement and success.Visual Thinking Strategies is a teaching method and school curriculum centered on open-ended yet highly structured discussions of visual art that significantly increases students' critical thinking, language and literacy skills.
Through VTS' rigorous and engaging individual and group 'problem-solving' process, students cultivate a willingness and ability to present their own ideas, while respecting and learning from the perspectives of their peers.
In VTS’ training programs for schools and museums, educators learn to facilitate student-centered discussions, engaging learners in a rigorous process of examination and meaning-making through original visual art samples that have been carefully selected for age and developmental appropriateness.
VTS has trained hundreds of educators in schools and museums in over twenty states reaching tens of thousands of students. Primary regional activities are found in New York, Massachusetts, Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Foundation grants and individual giving support our work.
Experience with VTS produces growth in all students, from challenged and non- English language learners to high achievers. In addition, teachers enjoy the process and benefit from a new approach that reaches all students and is applicable across their practice.
Company History
Visual Thinking Strategies is the result of more than fifteen years of collaboration between veteran museum educator Philip Yenawine, cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen, and their colleagues. As Director of Education at The Museum of Modern Art from 1983-1993, Yenawine was primarily concerned with making museum education programs more effective. His research introduced him to the work of Abigail Housen in 1988.
Housen, a Harvard-trained educator and psychologist, conducted empirical research exploring the depth of thinking of both experienced and beginner viewers when looking at art objects. The culmination of her many years of study, Housen's Theory of Aesthetic Development, identifies five distinct patterns of thinking that correlate to the amount of exposure/viewing subjects have had to art. Her research led to the advising and designing of museum programs and became the foundation of VTS.