What’s Art Got to Do With It? Using Visual Thinking Strategies to Develop Critical Thinking Skills

Abstract

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is an experiential exercise readily adapted to the management classroom. Through this exercise, instructors use a structured process to help students develop and apply critical thinking skills, with a focus on clearly articulating a concept, explaining their reasoning and use of evidence to inform their claim, interrogating assumptions, and exploring a range of perspectives. The exercise involves guiding students to interpret first visual artwork and then other texts through the use of guiding questions and specific facilitation strategies, followed by a practice and a debriefing. Additional adaptations discussed in the appendix, such as using VTS with graphic organizers from a course text, the landing page of a multinational company website, a SWOT analysis, or quantitative datasets, are a testament to the versatility and flexibility of this strategy in building students’ critical thinking skills across management contexts.