Across border learning: extending relational practice through collaborative poetry

Abstract

The writers experience a moment of reawakening, a return to the embodied experience of engaging in a collective creative arts-based opportunity to make meaning of a new experience. This reminder, one that occurred during an international study tour, provoked the authors to discuss ways to develop furth creative and collective ways of enhancing higher education learning experiences. Our learnings required us to engage in transformational teaching practices with our students and colleagues. While the aim of the international experience for students is to draw their attention to the beliefs, values, culture, histories, and complexities of a context beyond their everyday context, the reflected experience reframed the beliefs and values the author hold regarding teaching cultures and histories. The authors encourage practitioners and educators within Child and Youth Care / Social Care to embark on powerful, effective, creative, and collaborative arts-based programming within their practice as frontline practitioners and educators. It is through such accessible and intentional critical relational practices that Coyle, Pope, and Gulamhusein believe practitioners and educators will connect with those they work with, offer opportunities to make meaning of experiences, overcome inequities in non-collaborative approaches to care, provide spaces to challenge and question social injustices, develop resilience, and empower children and youth to realize their potential in their unique life journey.