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What We Offer

We provide a series of professional development workshops for educators to learn the VTS method. By facilitating real discussions about art, and reflecting on their practice with VTS coaches and trainers, educators learn how to create group learning environments that are open and accepting and result in extensive learning outcomes for their students. We use research to offer proven teaching practices. Participants increase their ability to hear, value, support and build from their students’ comments, no matter where they are starting from.

Since 2020, VTS has offered online training to our global community. In-person VTS training is available through private consulting.  Please read more below, or contact us at info@vtshome.org.

Workshops

Visual Thinking Strategies offers education and support in facilitation, coaching, training, Housen's Aesthetic Development research, and image selection. Whether you're new to facilitation or a seasoned practitioner, VTS offers professional development to support growth in all aspects of VTS methodology.

  • VTS Beginner Practicum

    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

    Find a Workshop
  • VTS Advanced Practicum

    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

    Find a Workshop
  • VTS Coaching Workshop I & II

    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 3 times/year
    •VTS Coaching Workshop II is offered online 2 times/year

    Find a Workshop
  • VTS Image Selection Workshop

    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 Image Selection Workshop is offered online 2 times/year

    Find a Workshop
  • VTS Learning Milestones Workshop

    VTS Learning Milestones Workshop

    •Introduction to the foundational research by cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen out of which she created VTS
    •Consider Aesthetic Development, Visual Cognition, and what learning with VTS looks like, through actual viewers comments as they look at art
    •VTS Aesthetic Development Workshop is offered online 2 times/year

    Find a Workshop
  • VTS in Science Workshop

    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.
    •VTS in Science Workshop is offered online based on availability

    Find a Workshop

Other Services

VTS offers a variety of programs and services that can be tailored to meet the objectives of your group or institution. If you would like to bring VTS trainers to your site (in-person or virtually), have specific questions about developing a customized training for your institution, or have some goals in mind and wonder how VTS might help you achieve them, please contact us.

  • VTS Look Club Online

    VTS Look Club Online

    VTS Look Club Online is an experimental, monthly, one-hour program, for anyone to join via Zoom.  VTS Look Club Online is an opportunity to come together as a community, to practice looking, talking, listening, and engaging with art and each other.

    Join VTS Trainers and practicing Community Member Facilitators for two discussions highlighting images from the VTS image curriculum and Trainer-selected modern and contemporary art.

    Several months per year, join us for VTS Look Club Online Residencies, in which VTS trained Educators from museums and cultural institutions around the world share their facilitation and collection with the VTS Community during this "virtual field trip".  Since 2020, VTS Look Club Residencies have been led by:

    VTS Look Club Online takes place on Wednesdays with a rotating start time each month to accommodate global time zones.  Please visit the Programs page to register for this program.

  • Consulting

    Consulting

    VTS offers consulting services tailored to the objectives of museums, universities, schools, not for profit organizations and corporate institutions. Consulting services include staff workshops, image selection support, team building experiences, curriculum and program development, and coaching support.

    Several clients include:

    • Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, Quebec
    • Cisco Systems, San Jose, California
    • Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Kentucky
    • Kyoto University, Japan
    • Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain
    • Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York City
    • National Portrait Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
    • Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri
    • Reade Rehabilitation Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    • Smithsonian Institution: National Museum of the American Indian
    • University of Auckland Medical School, New Zealand
    • U.S. National Park Service: Weir Farm National Historic Site
  • School Programs

    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.

    To inquire about implementing VTS at your school, please contact us.

  • Speaking Engagements

    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

VTS offers a variety of ways to go deeper in your VTS practice.

Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 and 10 by Da Ping