VUE Background & History
Visual Understanding in Education (VUE) conducts research and
publishes curriculum materials for elementary schools.
Visual
Thinking Strategies: Learning to Think and Communicate through
Art is a kindergarten through fifth grade curriculum.
VUE’s website, www.vtskids.org,
includes writing exercises for students as well
as exercises for teacher professional development, with an innovative
new user interface.
In Fall 2000, VUE published teacher manuals, posters
and slides for Kindergarten through Fifth Grade teachers and students.
The set now includes:
- Grade K-2 "Basic" Manual
- Kindergarten Posters (Set of 20)
- Grade 1 Posters (Set of 20)
- Grade 2 Posters (Set of 20)
- Grade 3-5 "Basic" Manual
- Grade 4-5 "Year 2" Manual
- Grade 5 "Year 3" Manual
- Grade 3 Slides (Set of 27)
- Grade 4 Slides (Set of 27)
- Grade 5 Slides (Set of 27)
- Basic CD-ROM, Grades 3-5
- Year 2 CD-ROM, Grades 4-5
- Year 3 CD-ROM, Grade 5
-
www.vtskids.org Interactive Website for Teachers and Students of All Grades
www.vtskids.org includes writing exercises for grade 3-5 students as well
as exercises for teacher professional development at all levels, with an innovative
user interface. Please contact us by phone (212-253-9007) or by email (materials@vue.org) to order any of these materials.
Developing, writing and publishing the VTS
Curriculum is the result of collaboration between Philip Yenawine and
Abigail Housen. VTS is the result of over fifteen years of partnership between
Housen and Yenawine, including research and numerous pilot projects. The
curriculum is now being used in programs ranging in size from one to
hundreds of teachers.
As Director of Education at The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Philip Yenawine was primarily concerned with making museum education
programs more effective. His research introduced him to the work of
Abigail Housen in 1988.
Housen had a long history as a researcher in aesthetics. A
developmental psychologist, she developed a method to understand
and measure viewer responses to visual art.
Their work together began by focusing on assessing
MoMA’s education programs — specifically, those for
teachers and students. The results
of their research
showed that both teachers and students were beginning viewers,
meaning that they had little experience looking at art, and their
interpretations were relatively naïve. MoMA’s educational
programs, by contrast, were found to be appropriate for museum
visitors with considerable viewing experience.
New programs were instituted, including the precursor to VUE’s
VTS. Changes were immediate
and substantial. Teachers who had little experience with art,
when properly prepared, facilitated significant growth in
their students’ viewing abilities. This led Housen and Yenawine
to think about classroom applications of this program, and they
produced an early draft of what is now VTS.
VUE, a nonprofit organization, was formed in 1995 to implement
and test VTS. From 1995 to 1999, VTS was tested in numerous sites
across the
US and abroad.
In the US, these cities included New York, New York; Byron, Minnesota;
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; Bronx, New York; Boston, Massachusetts; San
Antonio, Texas; and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In addition, a program in St. Petersburg, Russia led to a plan
for implementing VTS on a large scale. This “implementation
model” involves training teachers and museum staff in local
sites so that they can continue expanding on their own. See
Become
a VTS Site for more information.
This model was first tested in six countries of Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union (Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Macedonia,
Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan) in 1997, under a grant from the Open Society
Institute. It was also used as the model for most VTS sites in the
United States.
Research data from programs both in the
US and abroad, continues to be collected and analyzed. The findings
of these studies — in Red Hook, New York; Bronx, New York;
Boston, Massachusetts; St. Petersburg, Russia; Vilnius, Lithuania;
and San Antonio, Texas — have informed the design of VTS
at every stage.
Data continues to confirm that VTS is an effective means of producing
aesthetic development, as well as critical thinking and communication
skills, with every demographic group that has been studied. See
the Directory of
Studies for more information.
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