Visual Thinking Strategies—Theory and Applied Areas of Insertion

Abstract

Twenty-first century learners live in a highly visual world, being constantly surrounded by visual, technologized stimuli and the educational system, be it general or specialized—as in the case of higher education—needs to creatively meet and answer these learning requirements. Among the plethora of new or updated approaches, the concept of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) designed by Philip Yenawine and Abigail Housen has gained extensive popularity due to its capacity of being adapted to a wide range of specialized fields with notable improvement results. The main purpose of the present review is to synthetically and critically present relevant scientific work related to the application of the VTS procedure and to further identify possible study areas that would highly benefit from the insertion of this procedure. Thus, the theoretical perspective is tackled from a cognitive-psychology standpoint, followed by a rendering of the research variety in applied VTS contexts pertaining to different study domains, as well as online VTS web clustering. These contexts have shown a predilection for VTS usage, which improves higher-education students’ specialized vocabulary and speaking skills in the same target language, but not in the case of ESP (English for specific purposes) classes.

Infographics in Educational Settings: A Literature Review

“…In the The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) model [57], [58] paradigm, the use of visual thinking techniques is emphasized to encourage comprehension and involvement with complex material. Images and visuals should be used in infographics created utilizing this paradigm to encourage analytical, interpreting, and critical thinking.…”

“…Similarly, [107] presented Cairo's wheel (see Figure 3), a unified view of a multi-dimensional wheel designed to identify, analyze, and evaluate design patterns from multiple perspectives. Infographics have been found to positively affect cognition, as they reduce stress in understanding and interpreting information [108]. In a study by Cheng et al [31], a two-phase study explored an effective growth mindset intervention for higher education settings.…”

Saudi Learners' Perception of Infographics in Education: A Survey

“…Infographic or information graphics is a systemic organization of a set of graphic objects (images) and textual data. Collection and communication of information, as well as visual literacy as assignments, help facilitate learning processes [2], [29], [30]. Defining a systematic and structured way to organize and reveal qualitative data can be advantageous since infographics mainly architect a graphical representation of knowledge and information.…”

“…It is a unified view via multidimensional wheels, devised to identify, analyze, and evaluate design patterns for multiple views. While infographics strongly impact cognition, viewers generally experience lower stress in understanding and interpreting the information [30]. Cheng et al [41] explore the effective growth mindset intervention applicable to higher education.…”

Art and Heritage Culture: A High-Quality Inclusive Educational Experience in One Public School in Barcelona

“…On the one hand, it aids in the construction of the intrapersonal world, such as value construction (Raaijmakers et al, 2021) and civic value development (Moreno-Vera & Cruz, 2022), emotion expression (Zapata et al, 2017) and identifying and managing (Iribarren et al, 2021), self-efficiency construction (Cappello et al, 2019), finding and realizing personal character and interest (Tackett et al, 2023). On the other hand, VTS has a positive influence on basic interpersonal skills, such as appreciating Others' Perspectives (Campbell et al, 2022) and improving communication skills (Albert et al, 2022;Aspden et al, 2022;Cappello & Walker, 2016;Deroo, 2022;Moeller et al, 2013), enhancing awareness of the social problem (Balhara et al, 2023), developing culture competence (Aspden et al, 2022), moving away the invisible barriers in teamworking in intercultural context (Murdoch-Kitt & Emans, 2021), and motivating social brain function (Dalia et al, 2020;van Leeuwen et al, 2023).…”