A surprising lecture in the Creative Process course last week – partly because Associate Professor Peter O’Connor was unexpectedly called on to take the class, and partly because the topic he discussed was the importance of surprise to learning and creativity.
Associate Professor O’Connor began by outlining his own creative process for preparing the lecture at short notice. He tried many of the strategies already introduced during the Creative Process course: sitting down in a quiet environment to focus; going for a run; turning off and relaxing; and ‘sleeping on it’ in the hope of literally dreaming something up. Finally, still short of a starting point, he turned to his wife for inspiration. She suggested that he lecture on the subject of his recently completed book, “The Pedagogy of Surprise”. This proved to be the prompt he needed, and he was able to put together the lecture.
Associate Professor O’Connor began by reading the opening of the book, which described his childhood experiences at a Catholic primary school (from the horrors of warm, curdling free milk to the joys of reading). He recalls how his teacher, Sister Alaphonsius, used to take the class on nature walks. The children were encouraged to look at anything and everything as they rambled; the teacher’s instruction was “come and tell me if you find anything.” Mud, bark, dead worms: all were appropriate objects of enquiry. Associate Professor O’Connor pointed out that this open-ended process meant the children could “wander and wonder”, allowing both their bodies and minds to engage with the world around them. The process encouraged them to be curious, to explore, and to be surprised and delighted by their discoveries.
As an adult, Associate Professor O’Connor discovered the work of Dorothy Heathcote, MBE, a drama teacher and academic. Heathcote used drama to find playful and creative ways of engaging learners with the world physically, mentally and emotionally. She worked with young offenders, and also with children with autism – and it was learning about this kind of work that inspired Associate Professor O’Connor to pursue his career in drama education.
Associate Professor O’Connor finished his lecture by congratulating the Creative Process course students for the products of their practical work in tutorials, saying that some of the work produced has been ‘stunning’.
The next lecture in the course will be the rescheduled presentation by Associate Professor Mark Sagar (Auckland Bioengineering Institute). He will explain how the creative processes of bio-engineering allow the construction of computer simulations of human faces and behaviours.
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