EdLab stopped by the Rubin Museum last week to film our work with Visual Thinking Strategies and culturally specific, content rich collections. EdLab is a research, design, and development unit at Teachers College, Columbia University. After watching a full VTS session with two works of art, Laura and I were interviewed about our thoughts on working with this method.
In preparing for our interviews Ashley Mask, Laura and I had a great discussion where we thought about the following items:
1. What is the methodology of Visual Thinking Strategies and why/how do we use it at the Rubin Museum.
2. Our belief that knowledge is constructed, and that there are many tools that help us learn. VTS is an incredibly useful one, but it is just one of many.
3. This tool (VTS) contributes to a learner-centered approach in education with a content rich and culturally specific environment.
4. As educators, we believe in transparency about how we know what we know- and that others have a greater capacity to understand difficult concepts if their knowledge construction is self-directed.