Monthly Online Training
Getting started with Visual Thinking Strategies is simple. Our hands-on, research-backed method is practical, inclusive, and easy to learn—no prior experience needed.
We offer monthly, online, 12-16 hour live trainings at cost with options across time zones. Whether you work in a K–12 classroom, museum, university, or medical setting, you’ll gain facilitation skills you can apply right away—and join a dynamic community of learners committed to making education more engaging, inclusive, and effective.
Ready to start? Click on programs to sign up for an upcoming training.
VTS Training Programs
We offer training in VTS at every level—from beginner to advanced facilitation—as well as opportunities to practice with a coach, customized consulting for your setting, and a selective Train-the-Trainer pathway.
Less frequent programs focus on Housen’s Aesthetic Development Research (also known as Milestones in Visual Learning), Image Selection, Facilitator Coaching, and VTS in Science.
A Practice Grounded in Research
VTS is more than asking the three questions. It requires educators to listen closely, paraphrase accurately, and guide groups in constructing meaning together. Effective facilitation takes time and support—it asks educators to shift from delivering content to cultivating specific, evidence-based facilitation skills. Though this shift can feel unfamiliar at first, decades of research show that it leads to deeper learning, stronger engagement, and more equitable participation.
What to Expect
In these programs, you’ll take part in live, interactive discussions led by expert facilitators; practice leading your own image discussions; explore the research that underpins the method; reflect with peers; analyze facilitation moves in detail; and receive individualized feedback from experienced coaches.
This hands-on, collaborative approach builds both skill and confidence to bring open-ended, student-centered discussion into your classroom.
Why It Matters
Teachers are asked to reach every student—to include, adapt, assess, and improve learning—all at once, and often without clear tools for how. VTS offers a practical, research-backed approach that helps educators do what they most want to do: engage every learner and make real learning stick.
Customized Training
We also offer customized training worldwide —in-person and online— through private consulting. How can we support your learning? Contact: info@vtshome.org
Ongoing VTS Programs (Regularly Offered)
VTS Beginner Practicum
- Understand inclusive, learner-centered facilitation
- Learn the elements of the Visual Thinking Strategies method
- Begin facilitating and reflecting on VTS image discussions
- VTS Beginner Practicum is offered online 11 times/year
VTS Advanced Practicum
- Practice advanced facilitation techniques
- Identify how facilitation choices support & impact the discussion
- Understand the influence of several key theorists on the method and stance of VTS
- Consider the ways facilitation might shift with a non-art “image”
- Identify some tools to re-frame comments rooted in bias and assumption
- VTS Advanced Practicum is offered online 4 times/year
VTS Look Club - Online
Curious about what VTS is?
Join us! Experience a live, unscripted discussion online!
The Look Club is a monthly Zoom gathering— one museum partner, one hour, two artworks from their collection, a few minutes to learn what’s happening with them, and a room full of familiar and new faces from around the world—all brought together by a simple question: “What’s going on in this picture?”
Special Programs (Offered Once or Twice Each Year)
Sign up for our newsletter to be notified when these programs are scheduled.
VTS Coaching Workshop I & II
- Deepen understanding of VTS coaching methodology
- Develop skills for 1-on-1 and group coaching
- Practice, reflect on and refine coaching skills
- VTS Coaching Workshop I is offered online 2-3 times/year
- VTS Coaching Workshop II is offered online 1-2 times/year
VTS Image Selection Workshop
- Learn criteria for selecting images for VTS discussions for any subject area
- Practice developmentally appropriate image selection specific to your context
- Sharpen learner-centered facilitation and program design skills
- Understand how VTS can broadly support teaching/learning
VTS Learning Milestones Workshop
- Introduction to the research by Dr. Abigail Housen that laid the groundwork for VTS –mapping the development of visual learning. Visual literacy is not innate, but learned through practice.
- Consider the stages of Aesthetic Development, the growth of Visual Cognition, and what learning with VTS looks like, through actual viewers comments as they look at art.
VTS in Science Workshop
- Apply VTS facilitation skills to non-art objects and inquiry-based contexts
- Sharpen learner-centered facilitation skills
- Learn how VTS can support science teaching/learning broadly and build student skills relevant to understanding science
- Program design science modules using VTS, focusing on how to structure the different fact-based and discussion-based ways of learning.
Customized Services
Custom Consulting
VTS offers consulting services tailored to your objectives –whether you are a K-12 school, museum, university, medical center, not for profit organization or corporate institution. Consulting services include staff workshops, professional development, image/curriculum selection support, team building experiences, curriculum and program development, whole school or district implementation and facilitator coaching.
School Programs
VTS school programs are multi-year professional development relationships between classrooms, schools, and districts. Our model includes a mix of full-staff trainings, grade-level or content-area group debriefings, and classroom co-teaching sessions each year. Both our professional development training programs and image curriculum are sequential and developmentally based to reflect student and teacher growth in critical thinking, language and art-viewing skills over time.
Implement VTS at your school!
Speaking Engagements
Our staff of experienced Trainers have been teaching and learning with VTS for many years all over the United States and internationally. To arrange a speaking engagement, keynote, or introductory presentation with a VTS Trainer, please contact us.
Deepen Your VTS Experience
Curriculum
Stay current with the latest resources, image sets and curriculum with a VTS Web subscription. The Visual Thinking Strategies website offers 12 month subscriptions for both organizations and individuals.
Certification
The VTS Certification Program offers credentials, recognition and benefits to our ever-growing network of practitioners around the world. Certification is awarded to individuals that demonstrate the technique and presence of a skilled practitioner.
VTS Research
Browse our online collection of research of VTS and a variety of applied subjects.