Associate Professor Kim Snepvangers

Using images as a ‘catalyst for conversation’ this poster responses to the challenges of global education through new conceptions of creativity as collaboration and partnerships (Snepvangers et al, 2018). This poster showcases a creative ecologies approach utilised in the Teaching International Students (TIS) project as an exemplar to show how synergistic community-based approaches develop independent case-based knowledge in academic and student professional learning. Rather than focusing on traditional models of individual student learning and creativity as genius, which can end up reinforcing highly suspect, elite forms of deficit educational dependence, this poster focuses on the TIS project. Here, digital media students work with academics as ‘Students as Partners’ in their Career Development Learning (CDL). How three students created storyboards and animations, using the primacy of images as a narrative of collaboration informs the poster design. These students’ will reflect on how this collaborative practice model developed into an ‘Ecology of Practice’ (Kemmis et al, 2014) including diverse forms of co-mentoring and co-dependence in projects of partnership. The TIS project prioritises interdependent student and practitioner case-based action research methodology. In this creative ecosystem students and educators work iteratively to develop reciprocal relationships, making shifts in practice visible whilst simultaneously documenting career development (Rourke & Snepvangers, 2017). Shifts in practice are evidence by students moving from artistic outcomes to producing ‘visual learning artefacts’ that act as catalysts for conversation in the teaching and learning environment. Underpinned by Kruger’s iceberg theoretical model (1996; 2013) the student’s narrative animations explore themes ‘below the waterline’ to take a more holistic view in creatively exploring teaching with International students.