Deborah L. Boughton
Artist and social historian John Berger wrote that "seeing comes before words" and that often dialogue is our attempt to verbalize "the reciprocal nature of seeing…an attempt to explain how either, metaphorically or literally, 'you see things,' and an attempt to discover how 'he sees things.'"
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Seeing is so fundamental and connected to reading, understanding and communicating that we rarely bring our attention to it. We are constantly reading the world, making observations and developing inferences. At times, even my students who are struggling readers demonstrate that they can effortlessly form certain kinds of critical interpretations based on what they see. For example, by the end of the first week of school they have a "read" on most of their teachers. They know who will be likely to accept late homework, who won't notice if they take the bathroom pass for more than five minutes and who will look the other way if they bring a soda to class. When I ask students how they figure so much out so quickly, they say "you just look." This willingness to "just look" and the apparent ease with which students do it are the major selling points for Visual Thinking Strategies. When students bring their attention to the act of looking, and go through the process of verbalizing their observations and inferences together, their comprehension deepens, their discourse about text becomes more sophisticated and their writing improves.
VTS has been successful in demystifying the whole process of interpretation. Meaning making becomes visible and is no longer viewed as an exclusive skill performed by English teachers, art historians, the smart kids or other "experts." Students think aloud together, making inferences and describing the specific features of the visual text that support their claims. As they listen to each other and examine images even more closely, they revise meaning, speculate about the story the artist is telling and evaluate the artist's intentions and craft. The process reinforces the habits of mind I want students to display in their conversation and in their writing.
VTS advocates a developmental and Constructivist approach where students to make their own sense of art. In a recent article for Edutopia.org, Fran Smith explains that the VTS approach marked "huge departures from the way schools and museums have always taught art: Show kids Starry Night and feed them facts about Van Gogh." Citing recent studies, Smith goes on to say that "[o]ver time, students grow from random, idiosyncratic viewers to thorough, probing reflective interpreters. They go from finding only personal connections, which is appropriate when they begin, to searching out the intentions of artists and dealing with elements of styles."
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Smith's description of students' evolution into more sophisticated interpreters of art is similar to the pattern of growth that I've observed in my own students as they become more perceptive readers. When I read my students' responses to literature it is obvious that almost all of them can answer surface-level questions to prove that they have "comprehended" the piece. However, many of them struggle to answer questions that require them to analyze, synthesize or evaluate what they have read. Like the inexperienced viewers that Smith describes, their first attempts to interpret the text result in personal and egocentric connections. They have strong responses to stories but don't yet ground them in the text, recognize the author's intentions or appreciate evidence of craft or elements of style. Understanding Abigail Housen's work about the way people mature in their ability to interpret and read images, can help teachers to understand students' development as readers of literature.
After observing people of all ages as they viewed images, and listening to them think aloud as they made sense of a painting, Housen discovered five predictable patterns that characterized how people, from beginners to experts, view art objects. Like other developmental models, the stages of aesthetic development are followed sequentially. In Housen's model, however, the stages do not necessarily correspond to a person's age. In fact, a significant finding of Housen's research is that the majority of people, both children and adults, fit within the first two stages. This discovery led Housen and Yenawine to develop the VTS curriculum with beginning viewers in mind.
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A primary goal of VTS is to move them beyond the first two stages. By the time they reach stage three, viewers become more self-motivated. They have internalized the process of critical inquiry about art and have discovered key concepts about aesthetics that inform their understanding. These learners don't require as much direct interaction with the teacher and will continue to grow if they are exposed to art and can access pertinent information about the pieces they study.
According to Housen, the signs of visual literacy include, but are not limited to:
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Grounding inferences in the text, rather than relying solely on personal experience or imagination when developing an interpretation
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Moving away from looking once, to looking many times and linking observations together; then, revising meaning when new discoveries are made
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Recognizing that there are multiple valid interpretations and that at times artists are intentionally ambiguous
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Valuing complexity and recognizing that the text can be read on many levels: contextual, symbolic, metaphoric or philosophical
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Recognizing the concept of intentionality and evaluating the choices that the artist has made to make meaning
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Demonstrating a desire to classify the work as to place, school, style, time but recognizing that there is no single, authoritative interpretation to be supplied by an expert.
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Relying on intuitive, emotional response, as well as her critical skills when evaluating art.
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Although Housen is describing qualities that the visually literate person possesses, these same developmental characteristics could easily be used to describe perceptive readers.
Jump-Starting Literacy with VTS
The first stage that Housen recognized is the Accountive Stage. She considers stage one viewers to be storytellers, who use their "senses, memories, and personal associations to make concrete observations about a work of art that are woven into a narrative."
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Sometimes these viewers are quite tangential in their storytelling. For example, they might look at Brueghel's painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and fixate on a single, rather minor detail like the building alongside the river that looks like a castle. They might then immediately launch into a story about a princess that lives there. The accountive viewer would not feel a need to reexamine the painting for further evidence or new information. I see evidence of this kind of idiosyncratic, tangential thinking when my students attempt to connect print texts to their lives. When they respond to a question that asks them to make a substantive connection between a story and their lives or another text, they will focus on a single detail and ignore the rest of the story. For example, when trying to make a connection to Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" the student at this level might focus on the main character's heart attack, and immediately begin telling the story of a great uncle "who had a heart attack too." Like the accountive viewer, this student feels no need to scrutinize the text any further. Certainly, Mrs. Mallard's heart attack is the climactic moment of the story, but this student's connection does not lead her to any meaningful reflection about the story's deeper meaning.
Eventually accountive viewers develop into constructive viewers. A key change that transpires between the first two stages is that the viewer begins to make multiple observations about the painting that are linked together. She makes inferences about the story that is being told that correspond to concrete reference points in the painting. For example, when viewing Brueghel's painting, this viewer might notice that both the man plowing the field and the shepherd tending his sheep are working so hard that they do not notice anything around them. Later they might notice that both figures look like they are moving away from the figure of Icarus. These linked observations lead students toward a deeper understanding of the narrative unfolding before them. A similar dynamic will occur for students who are reading verbal text more closely. The student at this level might notice a pattern of behavior in the characters in Kate Chopin's story; all of the characters treat Mrs. Mallard as if she is sick and fragile. To facilitate these discoveries, VTS instructors poses a series of carefully designed open-ended questions to students:
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What's going on in this piece?
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What do you see that makes you say that?
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What more can you find?
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The first question taps into the accountive viewer's natural inclination for storytelling. While the question's phrasing allows comments of any sort, it encourages students to probe for meaning rather just make a list of observations. The follow-up question asks students to look more and to gather evidence to support their opinions. This requirement helps them to become more fact-based and logical. Their initial intuitive response is valued but they are challenged to build on it by thinking critically about what they see.
The third question pushes students to reread the visual text. As details that might have been missed are found, and new insights discovered, students begin to see that looking again has value. The VTS curriculum recommends that students spend a sustained amount of time (at least fifteen to twenty minutes) viewing a single piece of art. At first this may seem like a long time to some students because they genuinely believe that "there is nothing more to see." They view a piece of art, just as they might read a short story. For these students, "getting it" means being able to prove that you "comprehended" the piece by giving a report of what happened. They are satisfied with a cursory reading. "I know you want me to elaborate," they will explain," but there is really nothing more to say." For these students, classroom conversation is crucial. Their peers can teach them much more about "elaborating" and the kind of inquiry that drives it.
The teacher's role is to facilitate the process of inquiry: "To focus the group's attention, teachers point to whatever children talk about, and paraphrase their comments to elevate articulation, introduce new vocabulary, and convey that they understand and value every response. Teachers link children's comments to deepen the discussion and enable students to learn from one another. Throughout, they are carefully nonjudgmental."
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As the teacher keeps track of the various strands of the students' thinking and acknowledges how they connect and build on each other, they watch how interpretations unfold. They also learn to value complexity as they see that there is more than one valid way of seeing. This is a transformative realization for students who have had a difficult time letting go of the notion that there is only one right answer. Recognition of the way that artists and authors use ambiguity purposefully to demonstrate the richness, contradiction and complexity in the world, is another milestone in students' cognitive and aesthetic development.
A colleague of mine, Mike Wheaton, has always used an art based mini lesson to help student's understand the concept of ambiguity as it relates to literature. One of his favorite poems is "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke and he shares it with his AP class each year. For the most part, Mike understands the poem to be about affectionate but rough and tumble play between a working class father and his son. However, his students are usually quick to conclude that the "waltz" is a metaphor for child abuse. Many students simply won't entertain the idea that any love could be present in the little boy's memory of his father because of the drinking or the physical roughness described. My colleague attempts to disrupt this binary thinking by showing students two famous optical illusions: duck-rabbit and old woman/young girl. These particular graphics (which can be found quite easily on the internet) show images that can be interpreted in two different ways. As students allow themselves to switch back and forth between the two different readings, they see two valid interpretations existing simultaneously. Mike then raises the possibility that Roethke might have built ambiguity into the poem. In this exercise Mike helps students move to more sophisticated levels of interpretation.
Housen sees the type of black and white, binary thinking that students do, as typical of those in the second, constructive stage of aesthetic development: "If the work does not look the way it is "supposed to" -- if craft, skill, technique, hard work, utility, and function are not evident, or if the subject seems inappropriate -- then these viewers judge the work to be "weird," lacking, or of no value. Their sense of what is realistic is the standard often applied to determine value."
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In addition to limiting themselves to one "right" interpretation, students often make premature and unilateral decisions about value of particular texts. A reader at this stage might see Roethke's poem as incomplete because "he should of told us what was really going on." Many of my students have preconceived ideas about what a "good" story or "good" art is. Most often these ideals come from the "formula fiction" and commercial images that they have been exposed to in popular culture. If the art or the literature reinforces the values and expectations they are used to, if it follows a familiar pattern, it seems "good." It's always exciting when students begin to challenge these more conventional ways of seeing the world. Viewing a number of unconventional visual texts can be help students through this rite of passage. It's easy to see that a photograph on a postcard might be pretty. However when you compare it to it more complex pictures, say those that comment on some aspect of modern life, you realize that the pretty picture doesn't give you much to talk about.
As students are exposed to more art, and to more of their classmates' thinking about art, they will become more aware of the artist's intentions and craft. In Housen's theory of development, this discovery heralds the student's entry into the higher levels of aesthetic development: the classifying, interpretive and re-creative stages. When students become curious about the conscious and unconscious choices that artists make to achieve certain effects, they naturally begin to speculate about the artist's purpose. Again the visual text can help students see the literary concept. The frame of the picture becomes a useful metaphor for the author's point of view. Whose perspective did the author choose to include? Whose perspective did the author leave out? This type of metaphor can help concrete thinkers make the intellectual leap to more abstract thought.
Entering the Conversation: VTS as Training for Academic Discourse
The Connecticut English Language Arts Curriculum Framework states that teachers need to foster each "student's ability to communicate with others to create interpretations of written oral and visual texts." Furthermore, the framework asserts that students in grades 9-12 should be able to "respond to the ideas of others, recognize the validity of differing views and persuade listeners about understandings and judgments of works read, written and viewed."
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I was not daunted the first time I read this standard because I imagined that my students would be eager to enter into spirited discussions about literature. I pictured students listening to each other's views with an open mind, citing significant passages in the text and enjoying the kind of student-centered discourse that leads to new discoveries. My naïve assumption was that teenagers loved to talk and that therefore they would love to talk about books. I was wrong.
My real classroom looked quite different than my idealized one. I had a difficult time facilitating classroom discourse that lead to collaborative interpretation of text. Even in honors courses where I knew students were doing the reading and were more confident in their ability to articulate ideas, we struggled much of the time. While some students enjoyed debating about issues that were tangentially related to our study, they did not want to ground their arguments in the text. Even in these freeform discussions students had difficulty really listening to each other. When I asked them to slow down, to listen before speaking and to respond to the ideas of others they looked at me with great disappointment. "Why can't we just debate?" they would say as they shook their heads incredulously, looking at me as if I was too old to really get what they meant. We were at something of an impasse.
I want my students to be engaged in classroom discourse and to bring their passions and convictions to the table; however, I also want them to listen to each other, to think critically and to express themselves in an effective (and sometimes even strategic) manner. Certainly these are the skills needed by professionals in the executive boardroom and students enrolled in elite college seminars. When my students complain that this way of talking is unnatural, I assure them that I am trying to teach them the "discourse of power," a phrase that my mentor teacher Carol Jonaitis coined to describe the kinds of discussions that involve close attention, listening, restraint and critical thinking. I also remind them that there are other types of conversations to be had with friends and family for example where formality is not appropriate but that I am trying to help them to "play the whole range." Even though I assure students that creativity and humor can still be part of the discussion and that serious discourse is far from boring, it is still a hard sell. I believe that the quality of my students' reading, writing and thinking depends on it.
Even though reading seems like a solitary activity, it always involves communication between the reader and the author. Similarly, when writing for an audience, we have to keep the reader in mind as we draft our text. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstaff begin their popular text on academic writing by asserting that "[g]ood writing instructors have always known that writing well means entering into conversation with others" and that "[a]cademic writing in particular, calls upon writers not simply to express their own ideas, but to do so as a response to what others have said."
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Whether she is having the conversation face to face or on paper, the student is charged with the task of examining the view points of others and responding thoughtfully. Teaching these skills is not easy. I can't remember I've ever participated in a conversation with twenty-seven adults (never mind twenty-seven fifteen year olds) where we were consistently able to "recognize the validity of differing views" and "work [together] to create interpretations." I don't imagine that it is within the scope of this unit to examine every facet of this problem. However, I would like to outline an approach and some teaching strategies that have been effective in helping students become more insightful and willing participants in joint inquiry.
How VTS Helps Students Develop Analytical Writing Skills
Developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky said that "thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them." Through writing and through conversation we discover what we think. VTS gives students multiple opportunities to verbalize complex ideas and the social nature of the process challenges students to craft their communications for an audience of their peers. Because the teacher paraphrases the students' words throughout the process, students get to hear their ideas expressed with greater clarity. By listening, they learn more sophisticated vocabulary, more precise diction and improved grammar. They expand their linguistic repertoire; all learn skills that transfer to their writing.
VTS is also uniquely useful in teaching students to write about texts. According to Arthur Applebee, seventy-five percent of writing in English class is literature based, and the most typical assignment is an analytical essay.
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The habits of mind that students develop as they analyze text using VTS will enable them to write these kinds of papers more effectively. When students analyze literature, we expect them to make claims, cite evidence from the text and explain how that evidence supports their assertions, the cognitive processes that are central to VTS. Typically, beginning writers have difficulty developing their arguments by fully explaining how their evidence supports their assertions. Often students lapse into plot summary or make claims that they do not fully support. Master teacher Jane Schaffer noticed this pattern when she was scoring Advanced Placement essays for the Educational Testing Service. She determined that in order for students to get a high score they needed have a minimum of two parts commentary to one part summary or concrete detail.
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Schaffer identifies the concrete detail as the what and the commentary as the so what? In an essay based on a piece of literature, concrete details are the examples from the text, and commentary consists of the reader's/writer's opinion, interpretation, insight, analysis, explication and reflection.
Schaffer has found it helpful to give younger students a structured template to follow when writing. Essentially, she requires them to: 1) make an assertion 2) present concrete detail and 3) write two sentences of commentary for every one sentence of evidence. In her instructional unit, Schaffer gives students the following example of how to develop an observation.
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In OF MICE AND MEN, George Milton looks out for Lennie's welfare. For
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example. he tells Lennie not to say anything to Curley in the ranch house. (CD)
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He understands how easily Lennie gets into trouble without realizing it.(CM) He
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wants to keep Lennie out of harm's way by shielding him from contact with
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strangers.(CM)
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You will notice that this student writes two sentences of commentary (CM) to explain what the concrete detail shows us about George's relationship with Lennie. Often my students assume that the reader understands what they mean if they simply provide the example. Instead of providing commentary, they let the textual reference stand alone. Although I do not believe students should be required to continually write according to a predetermined outline, I do believe that it is helpful for students to internalize the habit of providing evidence for their assertions and then adding thoughtful, analytical commentary.
In the Reading/Writing Connection, Carol Booth Olson describes a strategy to help students become more mindful of how much plot summary, supporting detail and commentary they use in their writing. Olson adapted Schaffer's model slightly, dividing concrete detail into two categories: plot summary and supporting detail. In addition to having students practice writing commentary she has them color-code model student essays and their own papers with highlighters. She often has students use the color yellow for plot summary, "because it's kind of superficial and lightweight: We sometimes need some plot summary to orient our reader to the facts, but we want to keep [it]to a minimum. Commentary is blue because it goes beneath the surface of things to look at the deeper meaning. Supporting detail is the green because it's what glues together plot summary and commentary."
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Booth Olson found that color-coding their work helped students to more concretely see their thinking and gave them a road map for revision. Many students do not realize how much summary they do. As they work to try to get more green and blue in their paper, they begin to move from literal comprehension to interpretation.