Welcome!

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) uses art to teach thinking, communication skills (listening and expressing oneself), and visual literacy to young people. Growth is stimulated by three things: looking at art of increasing complexity; answering develop-mentally-based questions; and participating in peer group discussions, carefully facilitated by teachers.

Thinking about art, or aesthetic thought, is rich and complex. Psychologist Abigail Housen has been studying aesthetic thought since the early 1970s and has found it to encompass the cognition that educators refer to as critical thinking. Housen’s studies over ten years of VTS field research have shown that by the time students are in Grade 5 or 6, given at least three years of VTS, specific skills operate in all students: observing; speculating; and reasoning on the basis of evidence. Housen and other researchers have documented these skills transferring from art viewing to examining other phenomena as well as to writing.

During VTS lessons

• All students must have opportunity to point out what they see and express their responses
• Students must know that their thoughts are heard, under-stood, and valued
• Students must provide evidence to back up interpretive comments
• Students must see that each comment contributes to a group process of mining art for multiple meanings

VTS works best if you follow certain basic, logical, tested rules described in the lesson plans.

Enjoy what art and VTS discussions add to your classroom options. Have fun with students as they explore. And at the same time, know that they are learning skills that will be useful for the rest of their lives.