Week 13 Reading

Article: "A Toolbox Approach for Thoughtfully Structured, Creative Art Experiences" by Hanson & Herz

How might VTS be implemented into the 3 levels of the Toolbox Approach advocated by Hanson & Herz?

Teacher's Toolbox VTS can be a technique that teachers use to help students create meaning in a class setting. By using it through out the student's art education, the teacher can help develop students into more sophisticated viewers.

Class Toolbox  VTS being implemented into the class affects the class culture and how it collectively approaches art works.

Student Toolbox VTS can help mold the student's "habit of mind" that helps students look for meaning based on evidence.

Philosophically, VTS lends itself to a student centered classroom in which the teacher is a facilitator. As a skill set, VTS is a technique students can use as strategy.

If  classroom creativity is a group process, then VTS can lend itself to distributed creativity by helping students bring their knowledge and experiences to the class in an organized format.

VTS can aid divergent thinking, particularly fluency, by the last question "What else can we find?"

I found a strategy in a creativity textbook I am reading that looks very similar to VTS questioning. The book describes activities that promote creative thinking in young children. One such activity, Picture Possibilities, asks students to look at line or pattern pictures (think Torrance). Students are supposed to be given time to think about possible meanings. The teacher is to ask "What do you see in this picture?" "What else could it be?" pp 25-26


                      Torrance
                                             Book