Abstract
Contemporary nursing education in Australia needs to respond to the imperatives facing clinical practice - that nurses be work-ready, resilient, team communicators, and responsive to the diverse needs of clients. With the increase in chronic diseases, longer life-spans and sophisticated health technologies, nurses are working in more complex and dynamic environments. Therefore, nursing students are on a steep climb, one that ideally leads to a transformation from the personal self to a professional self that is ethical, skilled and committed to action. Transformative learning can provide a focused pedagogical basis for cultivating and achieving these graduate outcomes. However , according to Daloz (1999), "transformations rarely, if ever, come about abruptly. Rather they slip into place piece by piece until they become suddenly visible, often to others first and only later to ourselves. Throughout an action research study involving multiple discipline groups, nursing academics have been working on renewing their teaching approaches to deliberately, and repeatedly develop in students this transformed perspective. This poster explains the Action Research project that evaluated and extended the STAR framework in nursing. STAR is an acronym to encapsulate important transformative learning principles: assist students to become Sensitised about pertinent issues, to Take Action, and to Reflect. It will also provide snapshots from our journey. The embedded philosophy inspires critical, creative and constructive health professional graduates - change agents for a healthier future.