Customer Reviews

Visual Tools for Constructing Knowledge

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This book is more suitable for teachers and students, and not so suitable for business readers.

It is a relatively good book on visual thinking - more precisely, on the subject of using graphic organisers and concept maps, which can be used to help teachers in guiding their students to shape their understanding of reading materials in schools - and at home.

However, the visual tools introduced in the book cannot be used to cover all kinds of reading materials in schools. For examples, a story grid - which is not covered in the book - would be more appropriate to shape understanding of literature texts; a time line or time series - also not overed - would be more appropriate to track chronological events in history textbooks.

For the businessman, this book can be somewhat boring, although one or two of the tools e.g. cluster and fishbone diagrams, can be used to organise visually one's thoughts or ideas while reading business books.

For bu!siness use, I would strongly recommend Terry Richley's The Marketer's Visual Toolkit (Amacom)and/or Larry Raymond's Reiventing Communication. Both titles offer a very broad range of powerful visual tools for strategic thinking, planning, communication and problem solving. There are gems for the business user.

Even Nancy Margulies' Mapping Inner Space book (which I have also reviewed) is worth exploring.

Nevertheless, this book is still worth reading, especially if you want a deep understanding of why we are 'visual'. Also, David Hyerle's tools and ideas are still useful for the business reader, especially if one is pursuing business management studies e.g. MBA, in the evenings. The visual tools can be useful in that respect, particularly for probing understanding through the text, and taking/making personal notes.

I was disappointed in this book; much of it is devoted to making vast claims for the transformative effect of using visual representations of thought processes in education, without much in the way of concrete example. As an educational researcher, I did not perceive much in the way of intellectual rigor; as an elementary classroom teacher, I was not consoled for the lack of that rigor by much in the way of useful tools. This could have been a 15-page pamphlet.

This book was recommended to me by a fellow teacher who participated in a schoolwide adoption and application of Dr. Hyerle's Thinking Maps program. Her students' test scores increased measurably in the year following adoption of this program and she attributed this gain to the schoolwide use of thinking maps. Based on her recommendation and enthusiasm, I purchased this book, and am currently trying to find ways to integrate the maps and concepts into the established district-approved curriculum.

This is a very useful guide to increasing the rigor and results in using graphic organizers and other visual tools that support students in the construction of their understanding of concepts.