Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation

Slow Looking provides a robust argument for the importance of slow looking in learning environments both general and specialized, formal and informal, and its connection to major concepts in teaching, learning, and knowledge. A museum-originated practice increasingly seen as holding wide educational benefits, slow looking contends that patient, immersive attention to content can produce active cognitive opportunities for meaning-making and critical thinking that may not be possible though high-speed means of information delivery. Addressing the multi-disciplinary applications of this purposeful behavioral practice, this book draws examples from the visual arts, literature, science, and everyday life, using original, real-world scenarios to illustrate the complexities and rewards of slow looking.

Shari Tishman is Senior Research Associate at Project Zero, a research and development center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she also serves as a lecturer on education. Her work focuses on the development of thinking and understanding, and learning in and through the arts.