What We Offer

We provide a series of learner-centered professional development workshops for educators to learn VTS with the support of peers. By facilitating real discussions and reflecting on their practice, guided by VTS coaches, educators learn how to create supportive learning environments that are open and accepting, encourage risk-taking, and elicit multiple perspectives. Participants increase their ability to hear, value, and assess student thought and expression.

Our complete listing of upcoming events, click here.

Our brochure for Museum Services can be found here.

Workshops

Visual Thinking Strategies offers training in facilitation, coaching and aesthetic development. Whether you're new to facilitation or a seasoned practitioner, VTS offers professional development to support growth in all aspects of VTS methodology.

  • Beginner Practicum

    Beginner Practicum

    •Understand the environment of student-centered facilitation
    •Learn the elements of Visual Thinking Strategies method
    •Connect ideas from various thinkers & theorists to the methods of VTS
    •Begin facilitating & reflecting on VTS image discussions

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  • Advanced Practicum

    Advanced Practicum

    •Practice advanced facilitation techniques
    •Identify how facilitation choices support the discussion
    •Understand the influence of several key theorists on the methods and stance of VTS
    •Consider the ways facilitation might shift with a non-art “image”
    •Identify some tools to re-frame offensive comments

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  • VTS Image Selection: Art & Beyond

    VTS Image Selection: Art & Beyond

    •How to apply VTS specifically to your context (students and setting).
    •Sharpen student-centered facilitation and program design skills.
    •Understand how VTS can support teaching/learning broadly.
    •Learn criteria for choosing images for VTS discussions for any subject area
    •Practice developmentally appropriate image selection

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  • Coaching Workshop 1 & 2

    Coaching Workshop 1 & 2

    •Deepen understanding of VTS coaching methodology
    •Develop skills for 1 on 1 and group coaching
    •Practice, reflect on and refine coaching skills

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  • VTS in Science

    VTS in Science

    •How to apply VTS specifically to your context (students and setting).
    •Sharpen student-centered facilitation and program design skills.
    •Understand how VTS can support teaching/learning broadly.

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  • Aesthetic Thinking Workshop

    Aesthetic Thinking Workshop

    The Aesthetic Thinking Workshop provides an overview of the research that led to cognitive psychologist and VTS co-founder Abigail Housen's stage model of aesthetic development and to the creation of VTS. Workshop participants examine aesthetic thinking and how the understanding of its development can inform education practice.

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Other Services

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

  • School Programs

    School Programs

    The VTS School Program is a three-year professional development model and curriculum implementation for PreK-8 schools. 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 and curriculum models are sequential and developmentally based to reflect student and teacher growth in critical thinking, language and art-viewing skills over time.

    Our core school program regions are New York City, San Francisco, Sonoma/Napa, Portland, OR, and Seattle. Our non-regional school programs utilize VTS trainers and coaches living outside of our core regions, and are supported by the national VTS organization. To inquire about implementing VTS at your school, please contact us.

  • 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, team building experiences, curriculum and program development, and coaching support.  Our brochure for  Museum Services can be found here.

    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
  • 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.

  • Shadow a Trainer

    Shadow a Trainer

    VTS offers facilitation, coaching, and programmatic support to individual practitioners of VTS working towards program implementation. In a one-on-one setting comprised of classroom visits, observation, and shadowing a VTS Trainer, this professional development offering can be tailored to your interests and scheduled at your convenience with a regional Trainer. To coordinate your individual professional development plan, please contact us.

Deepen Your VTS Experience

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

Photos 1, 2, and 4 by Da Ping