An Interlude
Perhaps it's Possibilities
from 'Perhaps …' Series
I’m aware that Ian is currently working on preconceptions in pupils’ approaches to mediaeval history (aware because I help prepare the resources and put them on his website). Along with Jason at Oxford University, they’re researching the ways in which preconceptions affect the outcomes of students learning and they’re developing teaching strategies to address it. And this learning problem is starting to resonate with me; I’m understanding the extent to which my science/engineering background has constrained what/how/whether I learnt what my tutors anticipated. With hindsight I can see that, un-acknowledged and unrecognised, I believed that every assignment and every learning experience had a right answer to it. And hence the correct/necessary approach was to identify what this answer should be and then set about achieving it, usually by imagining what my tutor would produce under the same circumstances.
In some measure, a part of this process was natural. Reading Todd Henry’s article on the ‘Four Stages of Creativity’, it’s been reassuring to know that the ‘Emulation’ of my on-journey tutors – identified as his second stage – was perfectly normal. But, when combined with my preconceptions, it’s difficult to see how creativity could really flourish in me. Especially when one adds in a third factor – that a self-constructed learning programme has the disadvantage in that, by and large, one can end up exactly where one expects to be.
Re-reading the written work which I submitted along with my first assignment for Julia, it’s clear I used the ‘right’ vocabulary purporting to support the ‘right’ vision, declaring the ‘right’ ownership of the concepts and emotions. But now I find it unconvincing; did I really write it? Now it feels more like I was a kid, playing in the dressing up box, rather than someone who was writing from the heart.
And yet it could have been very different working with Julia because she was the exception which proved my rule (i.e. that one ends up exactly where one expects with a self-constructed learning experience). She challenged, informed, stretched me with practical assignments; exposed me to ideas, concepts, techniques, old/contemporary photographers and artists in technical assignments. And all of this was particularly stimulating for my linear, logical mind because I couldn’t predict where we were going – I was never sure what would lie behind the next door she opened for me, always with her subtle, but firm, encouragement to embrace it.
Returning to Todd Henry again, at some point, ‘Emulation’ becomes “ineffective and unbearable” and thus the ‘Divergence Phase’ of creative development begins. And yes, after a decade of learning and emulating, I came to this crossroads, though not because emulation was unbearable but because its adherence had become confusing.
At that point, the impact of preconceptions, emulation and ‘right’ answers was still unrecognised; all I knew was that my photographs had stopped feeling right.