IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION B

Abstract

Integration of climate, social and racial justice (CSRJ) into higher education curricula is increasingly recognised as essential for addressing intersecting environmental and social crises. While creative, interdisciplinary approaches show promise for engaging students with these issues, how students actually experience this learning in creative, practice-based disciplines remains under-researched. In 2022, our university implemented a principle-based framework to embed CSRJ across all courses, drawing on the Scales of Transformation. The framework assumes a learning journey that progresses from awareness through ideation and practice toward a shift in creative and professional identity. This study examines how students experience learning designed around these principles. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with students across two curriculum-based creative projects, inductive thematic analysis reveals a complex, non-linear journey that productively complicates the framework’s assumptions of progression. Our findings highlight critical pedagogical considerations: the challenge of accommodating diverse starting points, the necessity of space for experimentation, and the need for ongoing opportunities to build and refine knowledge through practice. By foregrounding student voices, this research offers empirical insights into how institutional frameworks are interpreted and translated into curricula , and what meaning students are able to make from them.