VTS, or Visual Thinking Strategies, is a groundbreaking, research-based approach to learning, leading, interaction, and arts experience. Co-authored by cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen, and renowned arts educator Philip Yenawine, VTS was originally developed in the 1990’s to support teachers and school-aged children in language development, critical thinking, and access to art. The last decade has seen an explosion of VTS application in the health professions and in leadership contexts: movements in which Arts Practica’s research, teaching, partnership sites, and community of practitioners have pioneered advances.
VTS teaching and coaching represent core features of ArtsPractica’s approach to clinical and leadership training in adaptive strategies in uncertainty. VTS is used as a “simulation lab” in Miller’s course on medical uncertainty at Brandeis University.
The video below shares a recent talk on VTS covering three areas: 1. Art and its unique opportunity for human learning and interaction, 2. VTS and the elegance of its mechanics, 3. Paradigm shifts of relevance that touch health and education.
Lecture on VTS in higher education and the health professions given at Boston University, 4.6.21
Additionally,this video describes a concrete example of one VTS is used in an ArtsPractica workshop. (Free video though registration required to access; part of a lively Q+A with neuroscientist Paul Seli)
Training
Arts Practica offers specialized trainings in VTS for leaders, faculty, and frontline teams in the health professions, as well as in higher education and in industry. We will often bring in faculty partners to co-teach on targeted topics from our extraordinary ecosystem of leaders, experts, and high performers in medicine and across worlds. For example:
- VTS and Physician Leadership: Physician Executive MBA Program, Brandeis and Tufts University.
- Catalyzing Team Performance with VTS tools (Grand Rounds, remote, and on-site workshop formats available).
- VTS for pre-clinical students, such as in Miller’s course on medical uncertainty at Brandeis University that support the humanities-based education of future student doctors and clinicians, such as advocated for by the AAMC’s FRAHME report.
- Faculty workshops, to energize new and existing programs on-site, such as recently at Grand Valley State University and at Boston University.
- Customized workshops for small groups and masterminds.
- Specialized trainings for those with introductory training in VTS looking to do targeted work.
Get in touch if you are interested in pursuing this training with Arts Practica.
For those interested in teaching with art with VTS, Arts Practica strongly endorses the trainings offered by the Visual Thinking Strategies home office, where many of our partner site collaborators train to gain a strong foundation in VTS basics, which takes four key components: 1) experience in VTS learning with art, 2) experience facilitating, 3) coaching and feedback, and 4) reflection. Local art museums, a phenomenal resource, often offer introductory trainings for teachers and the general public and are further a resource for digital images expressly for teaching. As of recently, Harvard-Macy offers a humanities fellowship for medical educators that includes initial training in VTS in addition to other arts-based methods, and Watershed-ed offers an online experience with a library of content designed explicitly for teachers. A dynamic community of trainers engaged in various forms of VTS practice and applications across the world is also a resource. ArtsPractica supports learning through whichever of the many resources work for the many unique paths of VTS learning, and has no financial relationships with any.
Because VTS is so transformative, training in it takes quite a bit of time, and it takes a village to raise VTS practitioners and programs. In pursuit of excellence with VTS for almost two decades, ArtsPractica’s VTS-based offerings are designed to both synergize with the pathway to VTS certification and to raise the watertable across this dynamic community of practice and research.
Scholarship
Arts Practica’s scholarly work on VTS includes:
- 2008 Harvard Study on the impact of VTS on medical student observation skill
- 2014 Literature review on VTS impact and general discussion of the method across disciplines (many more studies have come out since this publication!)
- Pedagogical discussion of VTS principles applied in bedside teaching
- A chapter on VTS as a force to catalyze reflection, fresh thinking, and teamwork in medical faculty development
- Statement on VTS and teaching from images in college-level teaching and learning
There is much to learn in and from the unique dynamics of VTS, which re-position the way we relate to one another and to art quite differently from the norms of the dominant culture. Encouraging the study of arts learning and VTS impact across disciplines, and integration between practice and study, is a core value of Arts Practica’s work.