Journal of Museum Education, Volume 41, Issue 2, 2016

This article discusses the effects of five years of VTS teaching on students, teachers, and administrators in the rural community of Byron, Minnesota.

Visual literacy is the ability to find meaning in imagery. It involves a set of skills ranging from simple identification, naming what one sees, to complex interpretation on contextual, metaphoric and philosophical levels. This paper discusses how visual literacy develops, how this development might be fostered, and the relevance of Housen's Stage Theory of Aesthetic Development.

VUE co-founder Philip Yenawine examines how student-centered discussions of art can be powerful forums for learning, and how the intricate design of the Visual Thinking Strategies curriculum creates an environment for such learning to take place.

Yenawine makes recommendations for those who write descriptive texts for museums, urging in particular that the writers take into account the fact that most of the readers of such texts are non-specialists in art.

Veteran museum educator and VUE co-founder Philip Yenawine discusses how the work of several developmental theorists (Piaget, Vygotsky, and Housen) informed his design of museum education programs, eventually leading to the creation of Visual Thinking Strategies. Presented at the conference of “Aesthetic and Art Education: a Transdisciplinary Approach,” Sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Service of Education, September 27-29,1999, Lisbon, Portugal.

Article grew out of a demonstration video and discussion that Philip and Danielle Rice, Associate Director for Program at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, presented at the 1999 National Docent Symposium. Both long-time art museum educators who have thought deeply about learning from art objects in the museum setting, Danielle and Philip present their approaches toward museum education, and question each other about their respective theories. Philip's approach, which is based on the research findings of Abigail Housen, has resulted in the development of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a question-based learning method. Danielle's approach, based on her many years of art-historical and theoretical learning, and practice teaching in museum galleries, respects the learning processes of museum visitors, but assumes the importance to museum education of strategically-chosen facts about the work of art at hand.

This document makes suggestions for selecting images to foster visual literacy, using as a guide Housen's theory of and research into aesthetic development. Beginning readers learn by being taught what they are developmentally ready to understand, what is likely to sustain their interest, and what encourages them to read more deeply while supplying challenges at the right time. This document presents a comparable approach to helping beginning viewers of art develop skills related to looking at and understanding art.

Yenawine addresses Common Core State Standards and the benefits of discussion to reach the goals of the CCSS.