In this conversation Fred Boss talks about the application of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). Fred discusses the potential of VTS to engage and include all learners, regardless of their backgrounds or abilities. He also explores the application of VTS in various subject areas beyond art, including science, history, and language classes, and discusses the importance of neutrality and adapting VTS for different subjects.

Resources from this episode

Permission to Wonder

Looking to Understand Inclusion

VTS website

Transcript of this episode

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Visual Thinking Strategies, VTS, art, inclusion, UDL learning.

SPEAKERS

Fred Boss, Mags

Mags  00:00

Welcome to talking about all things inclusion, a podcast where I get to meet and learn from people in the field of inclusion in its broadest sense, that inspire me. I hope they’ll inspire you too. Today I am talking to Fred Boss, a leading Irish voice in Visual Thinking Strategies, VTS as an educational method that reaches across subjects, not just the arts. Fred is an education officer with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. In this role, Fred has worked in curriculum, designing the arts in junior cycle and senior cycle and in level one and level two learning programs. Fred is constantly looking for new approaches to engage, inspire and include all learners in their education, and this is how he introduced me and many other educators to VTS in 2017 as part of the permission to wonder project. As the value of VTS as an approach to inclusion became more clear, this project was extended to looking to understand inclusion, a two year project funded through the European Union’s Erasmus program. It aimed to support educators from local arts and education communities to use Visual Thinking Strategies as a method to promote social inclusion with children and young people. Fred, we’ve known each other since 2015, when we first worked together on the level two learning programs toolkit, and in the years since, we have had many conversations on inclusive education and ensuring education and achievement for every learner. Among those conversations was VTS and the opportunity to participate in some training on it. For me, within the first hour of this training, I could see its potential outside of the arts as an inclusive too, and that is why I’m so delighted to be chatting with you today about VTS and your vision for it as an inclusive too.

Fred Boss  01:47

It’s great to be involved in this, and you built me up very, very tall there

Mags  01:53

All true. Fred, all true. Can you? Can you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and what it was that led you to VTS in the first place, and then to using VTS as a method to support inclusion.

Fred Boss  02:12

Yeah, I realize my birthday is coming up. I’m getting a lot more older in the tooth, so my background goes back quite a bit. So I taught art in a school in Dundalk for 18 years, coming towards the last 10 years of that, I got into EU projects, international projects and global projects. Coordinating transition years, other things, apart from art, which is what I was doing, and that kind of opened up a world to me. And from there, I got seconded to what was called NCT, the National Center for Technology and Education, which is now PDST, technology and education, which I’m not sure what it is now under, the new support service, Oide. But I was working there in teacher CPD, and then from there, an advertisement popped up in one of my emails, because I kind of keep track of things through various ways. And the advertisement was for an appointment as an education officer in the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, because they were rejuvenating Junior cycle at the time, and they were moving on now to the subject of art. And I kind of said, I think I’ll go for that, because I had spent a lot of time in technology. I wanted to move back into the world of art, which is kind of where I started anyway. So I applied for it, and lo and behold, I got it. Still can’t figure out how, but there you have it. I mean, so started work on Junior cycle art, and then the review for leaving certificate art came up as well, kind of a few years down the track, after that was done. So got involved in that. In between all that, as I started work on Junior cycle, we do a lot of consultation, as you know, in NCCA. And part of the consultation, I sent out emails just off the cuff to various ranges of partners and that that might be interesting stakeholders. Dublin city council got involved. They came along, and one of them sat down with me and said, Oh, by the way, we do Visual Thinking Strategies. And I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And then they started to introduce me to the whole story. And lo and behold, I’ve been involved with Visual Thinking Strategies probably since 2016 just a few years after joining NCCA.

Mags  04:36

Oh, I didn’t realize actually it went back that far.

Fred Boss  04:39

Oh, thanks.

Mags  04:43

I meant the visual thinking strategy for you, Fred, for those who are new to VTS, can you explain what it is?

Fred Boss  04:55

Yeah, so it’s in a nutshell. It’s both a social and cognitive approach to examining what it was based on, originally as a work of art, it’s moved into other subjects and other uses, but I’ll just stick with the kind of art side of things for the moment. So it’s a social and cognitive way of kind of analyzing a work of art. It started off in the 90s, I think, in New York, when the guy that wrote the book on it, as we like to say, Philip piena, and was working with a woman called AbigaIl House, and who just died, I think, last year, and she was working on esthetic theory and kind of trying to codify that. And he was wondering why people loved their experiences in the gallery. When they walked out the door, they hadn’t got a clue what they were looking at, but they thought it was the best time ever when they got a tour around the gallery and they saw all this stuff and they had all these facts, it didn’t make sense. So he said, right, we’re getting great review, great reviews, but it’s not doing anybody any good. Can we kind of bump that up a bit? So they started to work together, himself and Abigail, and they came up with this Visual Thinking Strategies method. And basically what it involved was they road tested over a while. There was a bunch, just a small bunch of questions, a method based around that on how you approach the questions, and then how you deal with people’s answers. And they found out at the exit surveys that they did, people retained a ton of the information, and it was all based not just on the fact that they were thinking, which is the cognitive side, and discussing and using language, and that brought on the social side, because their ideas bounced off each other, and had people in the group who would agree or not agree, and it was almost like a guided conversation.

Mags  06:48

And you know what I really like about it, Fred, the first time I did it was the non judgmental questions. It they’re they’re straight forward, they’re to the point and the teacher or facilitator is only there to reiterate and confirm they’re not giving their opinion to it, which creates a safe space for the child or the adult who’s engaging in the exercise. Yeah,

Fred Boss  07:16

and the neutrality is extremely important in Visual Thinking Strategies, the whole approach to it so and probably best explained by just taking it through the methodology of it, which is so simple. Like you do a search for VTS, you’ll find it if you go to BTS home.org, you get to the American website which houses all this information. I think all the research is available for free as well. On their website. So they’re kind of it’s good to go and see because it’s a continually developing process. So first thing is just to start off with a silent moment and that basically, no matter how big or small your group is, kind of pulls people together and focus them in on the thing that you want to discuss, the one say for moment, we say it’s an art gallery, close to one big painting that you want to discuss. So you give them a minute or so just have a look, because you can’t throw them in cold. You have to give them a few minutes or a minute or so, you know, just to get kind of a handle on what it is they’re actually being asked to look at, because that’s going to frame the whole conversation thereafter. And then you start off with the first of three questions, and there are only three questions, and the first question is never used again, so you only have to remember to say it at the start, and you don’t have to remember it after that, and you basically say what’s going on in this picture. And the thing about that is it’s very open. It’s not asking what you see over here, what you see over there, what you think of this, what you think of that. It’s literally saying to anybody and everybody in the group, what’s going on that. You don’t have to use the word picture. You can use the word image. If it’s a sculpture, you can say sculpture. It’s up to you. It depends what you’re looking at. Because, as you know, with that, the group we did there during the summer, I took them outside into the environment, so it was a very three dimensional space, and one person wanted to include the whole of the university in the discussion, which made the VTS method stretch, but didn’t go beyond breaking point, thankfully. So you when you start to get feedback, so say someone starts the conversation going, they start pointing out, or they start calling out various bits and pieces. You as the facilitator. You’re standing between them and the image almost you start to point at what it is they’re talking about, and you gesture up in the air wherever it is, and you kind of point things out by doing that. You’re not interrupting what they’re saying, you’re reinforcing it. And the group cannot help but follow where you’re pointing. So everybody starts it’s the same way if you stand at a tall building, you look up just for the laugh. Eventually your small crowd will form, and everybody starts to look up, wondering what’s going on. Same thing with VTS, they will follow the finger. And once. Finish saying what they said is then your job as facilitator, to paraphrase, so you’re giving back to them, so they know and they’re acknowledged that you have heard what they said. It’s also a chance for you, if you kind of miss something they said, To double check with them. So to check in with them, just to get back from them, to hear you, right? Is that the point? And while you’re paraphrasing, you go back to pointing. So again, you’re reiterating what they said a second time. Now what you can do is follow that up with the second question, which is really focused question. And in that one, you hit them with, what do you see that makes you say whatever it was they said, Okay, so what you see that makes you say, dot, dot, dot. And the reason for that is you can pick up on the one thing you would like them to reiterate more on. Or if say, you’ve been halfway through the session with the group and you’re finding a lot of them are falling in on the same thing, like it’s an outdoor scene of a football match, you might want to move the conversation on from that so you can say what you see that makes you say it’s outdoors, instead of focusing on the football match anymore. So you get them to focus and shift their gaze to different parts of the painting. Then to keep the discussion alive and keep it ongoing once they finish explaining, and as they explain again, you’re pointing all the time. You paraphrase back to them, just so they understand that you’ve picked up on the points that they made. Once that’s done, question three comes in and you say, what more can we find? And that is a very neutral open question opens it up to the group, and basically it’s not saying anything to them, apart from there could be something more here. Let’s have a look. Can anyone else see anything? And it opens it up to give somebody else a chance to come in. And you go back to pointing and paraphrasing, go back to question two, paraphrasing and pointing again. And then question three, what more can we find? And a section usually goes on for about 20 minutes, I’d say is kind of your your top time, really, with a group. But it depends on the group. Sometimes it can go longer. Sometimes they can eat through an image inside of 10 minutes or less, and then you move on to the next thing that you’re going to look at. So again, it’s judged by the group. But the great thing about it is the silent moment helps settle them down, the pointing and the paraphrasing lets them know they’re heard, but also the fact that you’re not you’re remaining neutral all the time, and you don’t say to one person that’s a great answer until the person that’s just an answer. So everything is treated the same and the same neutral approach. So everyone does pick up on that, and they do seem to be valued at the end of the conversations.

Mags  12:51

Thanks, Fred. There are a couple of words that jumped out to me while you were talking that all all lead to one thing. It’s in the name of the podcast inclusion and you so the words you use were, invite, settle, heard, neutral space for more and valued they are. They are key words in the inclusive world. So can you tell me, following that description of how we do VTS, how this has actually moved into that inclusive space? And I know you, you talk about it a lot in terms of social inclusion.

Fred Boss  13:35

Yeah, so VTS groups, what I do with education in the post primary scene, 12 to 15 year olds for the lower secondary and 16 to 18 for per secondary, it also goes to primary. It can go to early childhood. And there are people who use VTS when it comes to older groups, older people, adults, and also people with dementia. So it is a very inclusive process. The neutrality is what makes it the most inclusive, I think, because there’s no there’s no hierarchy set in the group, everyone’s comments are treated equally. Everyone’s comment is as valid as another person’s comment, and because of that, everyone is being treated the same. So they see that that usually helps reduce the fear people have in actually coming out and actually saying things. And I know it’s been said that, and Dublin City Council that I worked with closely on all this, have seen that because they’ve worked with a local school in the city center in Dublin, and that local school have seen students come out of their shell and chat about artworks, because they don’t feel that what they say is going to be legal to have by any other students in the class, because it’s treated so neutrally and so fairly. So I think the it’s not just the social kind of inclusion, it’s also that cognitive side of inclusion as well,  in that it’s not just that they’re part of the group and everyone in the group is treated equally. It’s also their idea is also treated equally as well.

Mags  15:14

We are looking at and we’ve spoken about VTS in the arTS, and you and I have had an awful lot of conversations around how this translates, goes past the arts and goes into other subjects. Is it you start in the arts and they learn skill there, and then you can generalize it to other subjects, or can you dive in and start with it in other subjects? And how does it work in other subjects?

Fred Boss  15:40

Right? Well, that’s the exciting thing. Is that I wish I could give you a full answer from my own experience, but I can’t. I had started that project, and then all of a sudden, covid happened, so I had started work with teachers in other subjects. Now they learn it through the arts through a gallery. So we give them the experience in a gallery so they see how it is. But part of the work was to get them to think as well about how it might fit with their own subject. So in science, could you VTS? An experiment in geography and history, probably a bit easier in that they have historical images that can be VTS. So again, it’s not treading miles away from art, but also it has been used in English classrooms and in the States, they’ve used in some other language classrooms as well, where you take a piece of text and your VTS that piece of text, and that has worked well. So it doesn’t have to necessarily always be an image. We have also tried it with video, and the video has to be short, and it’s best if it’s looped, because I did try it myself with a video that ran for eight and a half minutes, but by the time you’re finished pointing it at what they were talking about, you have eight and a half minutes to go before it comes back again. So to be kind of careful with video. If you can’t pause the video, you’re better off just maybe skipping past it, if possible. But it is possible to do

Mags  17:09

Yeah, and your text sounds interesting, like using the same questions, and are you? What are you asking them for in the first question? Because did you still use what’s going on here? Yeah.

Fred Boss  17:24

So basically, instead of saying what’s going on in this picture, what’s going on in this text, like you, you basically call it for what it is in front of them. There’s no point saying what’s going on around us on the whiteboard here. There’s no point, like, you know what’s in front of them. They know what’s in front of them. So just kind of ask them straight out, and you can have a big discussion about whether you say, is it a picture? Is it an image? Is a text or whatever? If I’m saying text, I immediately lock down the neutrality, as in, we’re all talking about words, end of story. We’re all talking about a piece of text instead of just words, end of story. So there are those discussions, and they go on all the time. And what we do from time to time is you will start off by asking one way, leave it for a few days. Same group, try it a different way. You see what the response is, which one is a richer response, and that sometimes helps. They have am used it in science, in the US for natural science. So they’re taking school groups out to a natural history museum. They have kind of stuffed birds and stuffed animals, and they bring them out because they’re not moving. It’s easy to point you don’t get your finger bitten off. You can paraphrase what’s being said. You can use three questions very easily. That has worked well, but they have found they wanted to adjust the second question a little bit because they wanted to focus more on a science side of things. So there wasn’t so much what you see the major say they wanted them to focus in on thing I cannot remember off the top of my head the exact words. And went looking for it earlier today. Try and find a few, but I couldn’t find it fast enough. But they have actually subtly changed the questions a bit, but not by that much, and that they still keep with the level neutrality of all the questions, still start with aside a moment, still paraphrase, still point. Okay,

Mags  19:14

so it sounds like why you stick with this format and style, that there is flexibility to contextualize specifically that second question to the subject, yeah,

Fred Boss  19:29

but it’s something that, knowing how it works with the visual arts, which is where it was designed originally, it’s something I would say, if anyone’s trying it out, you want to run a test on it for a while. Like, really test it out. Okay, I think the results, yeah,

Mags  19:47

so, testing out the how you’re going to adjust that second question to to get value from using it within that subject, exactly. Yeah, and like that. That’s the real. Good thing is, you’re you’re not saying, Here’s VTS, and it’s great. Use it everywhere as it is. You’re saying you you need to try it, and you need to figure out how it will work best with your subject and your students.

Fred Boss  20:10

Exactly like I had an interesting question. I can’t remember who was from, but it was actually might have been for the UDL conference she did there in June, July. It was from someone at they were saying, because all the questions are, what’s going on this picture, what you see that makes you say, what more can we find? Let’s suppose they’re visually impaired or blind. So what do you see that makes you say? So there are ways around that. I know there was a study submitted, a very short study, very, very small sample size of four contributors each session, and they weren’t fully blind, but they were visually impaired. But because it was done over the internet, through zoom, you could zoom in and out on the object itself, so they were still able to see what was going on. The questions didn’t have to be adjusted, really, but there are ways around that. Then you would really have to kind of, I’d say you’d really have to run it through. If you were to work with a group that was fully blind, how would you do it? How would you think through? So it’s interesting, because some museums, as well, out of interest, are also moving into allowing people to touch certain exhibits. And they put up exhibitions for those with sight loss or who are partially sighted, and they’re allowed to touch and feel their way through the exhibit and get very close to the exhibition itself. So there are ways it can be used.

Mags  21:43

Yes, does the I was in, I don’t know if I do you pronounce him munch or monk? I’d say monk. So I was in the monk Museum in Oslo during the summer. And two things. First of all, they did actually have QR codes for the scriptures, which I thought was very inclusive, um, but I actually used the three questions. I went, Oh, I’m in a museum. I’m in an art gallery. Fred will be  really proud of me if I use my questions.

Fred Boss  22:15

Gold star omment already.

Mags  22:16

Yeah, absolutely. But normally I just go for for the paintings that draw me in. And you know, it did based on color and the emotions that it brings out. So I actually purposely went to ones that weren’t really draw me and asked myself the questions. And it really worked. I probably spent longer at those paintings than I did at the ones that I was originally drawn to. So even even as a self study or using it within your own learning skills, even with that facilitator, do you see a role for it there?

Fred Boss  22:50

I do, and I have subtly used it in meetings in the NCCA, oh, so I have See, the thing about this is it’s very evidence based, as in, there’s a painting in front of this group of 15 people. I am pointing at it. And when I say, what do you see? That makes you say, whatever you’re going to have to tell me that there’s something that you’re talking about that’s in there. And we have had people change their mind saying, Actually, I thought it was this. Now I think it’s the other thing that’s fine. It’s still evidence based. So every now and then I have cheekly in meetings, kind of said, What do you see that makes you say based on the information they’re giving or based on what the point is that’s being talked about, it’s actually it’s a really good question for getting people to kind of just narrow things down. Excuse me, actually point out what I really mean is, and the reason I mean it is because of and now all of us know exactly what we’re all talking about. So it’s actually a really good kind of question. That second question,

Mags  23:48

yeah, although you’ve given your secret away now and everyone in the NCA meeting will know what you’re doing,

Fred Boss  23:53

that’s okay. That’s more than okay. It just means they’re going to be ready for it, does it?

Mags  23:59

They’re going to be ready for it, Fred, you keep using the word neutrality when you’re talking about VTS, and for me, every time you say it, I think universal. And as you know, I’m huge advocate for universal design for learning, and I know that you and a colleague of ours, Sean Nolan, over in University of Malmo, have been working together on on drawing the dots or coloring by number around UDL and VTS, trying to get all of my art words in there. Now, what thoughts do you have, acknowledging that this is a very early conversation of drawing alignment between the two of them. Where do you see UDL and VTS supporting each other as inclusive approaches within the arts and across all subjects?

Fred Boss  24:56

Yeah, I suppose. My thinking is very open on this. That’s the first thing I say. So that’s as neutral as I can get. I think Visual Thinking Strategies, or VTS, is a definite method, methodology. It has a curriculum. If you go to the permission to wonder website, there’s an image bank that we developed, and we did that Erasmus project about six years ago. Now, we developed an image bank there in order for us to trial out how these images could be used in school situations, excuse me, or with groups. So we did that. So it’s a very focused methodology, and we’d always kept it around art, because that was its base, originally. So all the research is strongest in the art side of things, more than everything else. But the research is starting to grow, for sure on that, and UDL, to me, is bigger, because it’s how do I, as the teacher, instructor, facilitator, help take everybody in from day one in what the hell it is I’m trying to do? So it’s, it’s, it’s gone from the gallery, it’s gone from the museum. It’s, it takes, it can take them all in. In other words, whereas at the moment, VTS is still very much focusing the arts, but has a lot of potential that has been explored over the last 10 years in bits and pieces by various groups to see how it can be used. And I think where it kicks in, the strongest for VTS is yes, it works on the cognitive side. It is a way for teachers. Words slightly is probably not the way to say stealthily might be a better word. Stealthily. Bring in language with their students and get them used to discussing things. So say again, back to the art class. Get them to use in terms that the teacher wants and understand, no depth perception, perspective, fuller tone, all that kind of stuff. So the teacher could facilitate VTS and bring in some of those words, because that’s the words they’re going to use during the week in the class with the students, you know? So it’s important, I think, and it works well for that UDL, I see is the bigger picture. The VTS can sit inside,

Mags  27:21

yeah, because as you were saying that, and you were talking about the teachers gently bringing in the language, like even using, again, that first question of what’s going on there, it’s a safe space. It’s an invitation. It’s not Fred to tell me what’s in the picture, or or use specific words to describe. So again, it’s that Invitational space. So I see a place for it based on what we’re talking in multiple means of engagement. Yeah, yeah. So

Fred Boss  27:54

even in the paraphrasing, for example, you as the teacher, that’s where you put in your language that you want them hopefully to use later on, yeah. So you start to bring in things, the words that you want them to know and to understand, yeah.

Mags  28:06

And again, that’s then building on their knowledge and and giving them the confidence to know, oh, I know that’s the right word, because I heard it from teacher Exactly.

Fred Boss  28:14

And sometimes the kids would actually come out with stuff themselves, and that’s where you kind of do the timeout signal like that, and you say, Okay, we’re gonna have a timeout here because this child over here has just said something now. And just in case we’re not all on the same page, understand what they mean, let them explain the term to us and what they mean. And then you’re back to pointing and paraphrasing. Again, yeah,

Mags  28:39

but again, that’s, that is. It’s going back to what you said at the beginning, about letting them know that you’ve heard what they’ve said and you’ve picked up on their points. It’s actually going a bit past that, and it’s, it’s showing I value what you’re saying. So I want to know what you think this word means. I’m not going to tell you what I want you to think it means exactly,

Fred Boss  29:01

and that’s the annoyingly good key thing that people don’t like at the end of a VTS session. So for example, if you remember the session I did at our UDL session in June conference in June. So we had that picture of by the Irish artist, and we were talking about and everybody, to a man and woman in the audience, wanted to know, what’s the picture called? What’s it about? You know, all this kind of stuff. And I said, No, actually, we’re kind of done now. The whole thing about VTS is the group has decided between themselves then and there, during that 20 minute session in the discussion, this is where they think the painting is. You can always come back to it later, and we can go again. Go again and develop more of it. They can always go away and find out more about The Painting themselves in their own time. But sometimes the openness of VTS session can great with some people in that they feel. You have to now tell me who the artist is. You have to now tell me, You know what paints were used, when was it painted? You have to tell me all this. That’s not the point of the VTS session. It’s not an art history lecture. It’s something that’s both kind of social and both cognitive. Brings a group together, helps them develop their own learning. They might not even have said a single thing. That’s the right answer if this was to be looked at artists or they have enjoyed the painting, and that’s why they connect with it, and that’s why they were finding in the exit surveys. At moment, they actually remembered what they saw, because they connected to working and again.

Mags  30:37

So that connected goes back to you. You’ve engaged them. They’ve engaged themselves. They’ve gone away with a sense of success or a sense of achievement from that which builds a foundation. Because, of course, we have to go on and we need to have the language, and we need to know the right answer for our test, but you’re building that foundation so that they want to come back and they want to learn more, and the teacher, and you said this at the UDL conference, that the teacher can revisit the questions at a later stage if a challenge comes up, that they can actually go back and reuse them a second time. Oh, yeah,

Fred Boss  31:16

no, exactly. There’s, there’s no reason why you couldn’t, absolutely no reason at all. That’s the whole point of the neutrality and the openness of Visual Thinking Strategies. You can always give it a second go

Mags  31:28

and a third. Need space. Yeah. Super great. If you were to have a teacher come in and say to you, look, where do I start? There? There is no VTS training, but I want to try it in my classroom. Where do I start? Where would you tell them to start? What advice would you give?

Fred Boss  31:47

Yeah, that’s the important thing we found is that with the training, what happens is you get a grounding in it, because the United in the US, the VTS, people, have actually built up a whole kind of methodology around even the training. So you have a kind of a beginner’s practicum, you’ve got an advanced practicum, and then you have a coaching level practicum. And a lot of us now, over the two projects both permission to wonder.com and do the one thing. It’s called, yeah, looking to understand.com and the wonder was going through the whole training sequence for all the people involved, for all the teachers, museum educators and artists involved, they were trained right through beginner to advanced coaching level, and that gave them an extremely good grounding. And then practically everybody came back to the second one for the second Erasmus project, which was called looking to understand, which is on looking to understand.com and because of that, what we did on that second website, or sorry, on the second Erasmus project, was we looked at inclusion, and that was the important thing, because we know that visual thing strategies is an inclusive methodology. So we wanted to see what was inclusion like within our own organizations, our own countries, our own education systems, gallery systems, etc. So we spent the second or as a project, kind of eating our way through. This is how things work in our country. This how things work in your country. What do we think of so we’re developing ourselves more than anything else, but it came out with a better understanding of inclusion across the board for all of us,

Mags  33:38

okay, and thinking about like so that second project looking to understand around inclusion. But as you said, it’s, it’s about how things work. And you’re, you’re not a teacher anymore. You’re, you’re a curriculum designer, and that’s your usual. Have you seen the impact or the influence of VTS on your curriculum design, and is there a place for it at that high level of thinking about curriculum, whether it be the arts or another subject?

Fred Boss  34:10

Yeah, that second question I did use, as we were writing curriculum, I would say to people, what do you see that makes you say so, in other words, we’re trying to design. There any outcomes? Yeah, what you see in this learning outcome that makes you say, you know, so you have these kind of ways and things. So, yeah, I did. Unfortunately, they didn’t know it at the time. I think of it, I was using VTS on them, but it does focus things in on gets right to the heart of the matter straight away. So it did make people kind of think about things. So I have used it at that high level.

Mags  34:50

Yeah, but as you said that and that second question, Will you repeat the second question again for me, so that I get it right? So

Fred Boss  34:56

what do you see that makes you say that dot, dot, dot

Mags  34:56

So what do you see that makes you say and as soon as you said that at the higher level, I went straight into teacher mode. I went learning intentions and making sure they’re clear so that the students can actually succeed. Like that might be a lovely place for for a teacher to start exploring. VTS, yeah.

Fred Boss  35:22

But again, that’s not necessarily the VTS methodology. The only I will caution people about and you can go in with great intentions, yeah, right. So the bottom line is, you can, you can get the book that was written by philippianwood, which goes through the methodology. You can try it out, but it’s always good to have someone who’s done it before, even who can talk to you if they can’t observe, to help you get over some of the stuff, because then staying neutral is a very difficult thing to do if you’re the classroom teacher of a class, so it can be very difficult to do to keep the neutrality going, um, the second question, while it’s an easy one to say, is a tricky one to pick. So what you see that makes you say, and what do I pick from what they said? And still keep other things in your head while you’re still pointing and paraphrasing, that’s tricky as well. What more can we find is a very just, you know, lining up the next kind of thing to go through it all again, but, um, it does need a lot of practice. So I would say to people, fine, free. You’re free to go ahead and do what you want to do, but it will be good if they were kind of able to work with a group, especially someone who has done it before. It’s just, it’s, it’s much easier to get a grasp of it if you can work with someone who’s done it before. I know we ran online courses in 21 in the middle of covid. Myself with them, Dublin City Council, and some of us who’ve been trained all the way up since 2016 and so we did run courses on that, and they went well, and they were all online, went well, but we knew the methodology. Yeah, you know.

Mags  37:09

And is there any training currently in Ireland for teachers who might be interested in

Fred Boss  37:15

at the moment, I don’t think there is anything face to face going on. VTS USA, do run training sessions online. So you can always sign up and go with them there. And they’re very good if it’s the home of VTS. So, you know, I would have no problem recommending them, but again, that’s based America, so you’re obviously doing it online. Yeah,

Mags  37:38

I don’t know, Fred, it might be a gap that you will need to fill in the future.

Fred Boss  37:43

Oh yeah, roll on. Happy retirement. Difficult because I’m working on the curriculum side. Dublin City Council working on their side of things. Neither of us are training organizations. We’ve had the discussion that’s where we ran the training for a couple of online courses for a while just to test the waters and not see if people wanted, yeah, people did really want it. We had things from teachers people, from teachers to Museum and galleries and art educators or wanting to get involved. But again, you can only fit so many in because it’s it’s people dealing with people. So to keep the quality good. You have to keep the numbers down.

Mags  38:22

The numbers low. Okay, well, speaking on retirement, you’re not there yet, but we are coming to the end of this conversation where you can retire for the day. Are there any resources for further independent learning that you would like to share with us today? And you’ve mentioned the two websites permission to wonder and looking to understand, and I put those links up in the transcript. But is there anything else?

Fred Boss  38:45

Well, there’s the VTS website. And again, if people want to see how it’s used in science and other subjects, all the research, as far as I know, is 100% free on that website. So just go to website, click the research button and start hunting. Um, actually, one thing I didn’t mention is, from the art side, image selection is extremely important. So VTS in the US realized that their image selection was great for VTS originally, but then they realized that when it came to diversity, maybe the images they were using weren’t so good anymore. Okay, so when it comes to inclusion, they’re even looking at themselves now to say, Are we as inclusive as we thought we were? So the questions are, the methodology is, but as the basis of this, the images we’re using, how inclusive are they? So when it comes to doing this with a class that, say, a teacher in a school, you would know the kids, the areas they’re coming from. You’d know everything, more or less about them. So therefore, you can work on being more inclusive in the content that you give the kids from day one.

Mags  39:54

And again, as you said, you’re going to know that context. So you think of that when you are picking the image. Again, if you’re teaching art, I’m presuming there are certain images that you need to look at because you’re looking at particular artists. Is that still the case in art?

Fred Boss  40:10

It depends Well, in leaving certificate art now, because we’ve got a more open curriculum as such, in that the strands are great research respond with the learning outcomes in them. It’s been designed in a more integrated way, in that a lot of learning outcomes will work with both what’s called Visual Studies, the art history side of things, as well as the practical the making side of art. So the learning outcomes work both ways, and so on, trying to get the language across. And that for students, it works really well that way. Okay,

Mags  40:44

um, we go back to resources, because I know you did mention a book to me earlier, yes,

Fred Boss  40:50

yeah, that’s Visual Thinking Strategies, using art to deepen learning across school disciplines. And that’s why Philip januen, who started Visual Thinking Strategies with Abigail housing,

Mags  41:01

okay? So that’s kind of the go to the foundation book,

Fred Boss  41:05

the initial Bible, if you want to kind of find out how things work. Go with that. One super

Mags  41:10

Right? Any final words that you would like to share with everyone today? Two

Fred Boss  41:16

really final words, I think the whole thing about VTS is, and it’s based a little bit around the viscosity zone Proximal Development, and that VTS is a way of moving people’s thinking and learning from an area where they’re comfortable and safe, hitting them with a second question, what you see that makes you say that, and then seeing how a group responds or moves things along little by little into another area of learning. So it helps them to open up, helps them to move on completely. I think that’s kind of the whole point of and that’s what helps make it not just inclusive, but also very much an educational methodology. Yeah,

Mags  41:58

I like what I’ve heard there is again, you’re you’re starting with with the students, showing you the constant competency that they have, and you’re facilitating or giving them opportunities, or even challenging them to keep building on that as you’re going through it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Oh, lovely. On that note, I would say goodbye to everyone. Thank you so much for joining myself and Fred for talking about all things inclusion, and I hope that you will all join me again soon. Thank you again, Fred, so much for sharing with us about VTS today.

Fred Boss  42:31

No problem. Any chance I get to chat about it.