Visual Thinking Strategies and Creativity in English Education Keun Huh* Department

of Children’s English, 70 Hannam-ro, Daedeok-Gu, Daejeon - 34430, Korea;

keun@hnu.kr
Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 9(S1), DOI:
10.17485/ijst/2016/v9iS1/109885, December 2016
Abstract Objectives: The study attempts to define what creativity and visual thinking
mean in English education and to suggest how teachers can enhance children’s
creativity through visual thinking strategy in English instructions. Methods: The method
employed in this study is an analytic literature review in order to examine previous
studies of creativity and visual thinking strategy, focusing on English language teaching
and learning. The leading themes emerged from the literature review are: 1. A strong
connection between creativity and language development, 2. A wide range of
applications of visual thinking strategy, 3. Optimal environments for creativity and visual
thinking strategy development. Findings: Findings indicate that only a few studies
researched on concrete and explicit teaching models of visual thinking strategy in the
area of English education, especially for English as a second or foreign language
learner. Moreover, it seems that the concept of visual thinking and the advantage of
visual thinking strategy are relatively unfamiliar idea in the area of English education.
Therefore, more research should be conducted to develop various techniques and
models applied with visual thinking strategy for English language learners’ creativity and
English ability. The key finding of this study is meaningful in that it raises the issues of
visual thinking strategy which can be effectively incorporated to language instruction,
and it highlights the role of language teachers as a facilitator and provider of optimal
learning environments for both creativity and visual thinking strategy. Finally, it is hoped
that the finding of the study builds awareness of teachers and boosts adoption of
levelappropriate practices of visual thinking strategy lessons. Additionally, it is also
hoped that the finding helps the development of a theoretical framework for visual
thinking strategy use in English education. Improvements/Applications: Based on the
finding, suggestions are made for effective ways of teaching visual thinking strategy and
integrating it into creativity development of English language learners in optimal
classroom environments.
Visual Thinking Strategies in medical education: a systematic review

 Research
 Open Access
 Published: 27 July 2023
 volume 23, Article number: 536 (2023)
  Ana Rita Cerqueira,
  Ana Sofia Alves,
  Matilde Monteiro-Soares,
  Dabney Hailey,
  Domingos Loureiro &
  Sofia Baptista
Background
Arts-based pedagogical tools have been increasingly incorporated into medical
education. Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a research-based, constructivist teaching
methodology that aims to improve visual literacy, critical thinking, and communication
skills through the process of investigating works of art. Harvard Medical School
pioneered the application of VTS within medical education in 2004. While there are
several studies investigating the use of VTS, there is a need to systematically assess
the different programs that exist for medical education and their efficacy in improving
relevant clinical skills. This systematic review aims to critically analyse the available
evidence of the effectiveness of VTS in medical education to guide future research and
provide a framework to adapt medical curricula.
Visual Thinking Strategies—Theory and Applied Areas of Insertion

by
Carmen Narcisa Albert
1
,
Mihaela Mihai
1,*
and
Ioana Mudure-Iacob
2
1

Department of Interdisciplinary Skills, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary

Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, 400372 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2

Department of Foreign Languages for Specific Purposes, Faculty of Letters, Babeș-

Bolyai University, 400394 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

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.
Keywords:
visual thinking strategies (VTS); higher-education-specialized VTS
applications; VTS web clusters; English for specific purposes (ESP); technical
vocabulary; sustainable communication skill