VIRTUAL MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY

Abstract

The CARE Framework is a human-centred, values-led model for student and graduate development that responds directly to the complexity of contemporary higher education. CARE can be found here: https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/12229/ Built around four interconnected domains – Connection, Awareness, Reflection, and Empowerment – CARE expands traditional employability models by integrating wellbeing, identity, and relational learning into the heart of curriculum design. Rather than treating employability as a destination, CARE recognises development as an ongoing, whole-self process shaped by context, lived experience, and systemic conditions. Emerging from practice-based research in design education and informed by behaviour change theory, inclusive pedagogy, and sustainable development, CARE addresses many of the forces currently reshaping education: the drive for more ethical and equitable practice, the embedding of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the impacts of generative AI, and the diversification of student experience. The framework supports students to grow in confidence, purpose, and relational awareness – as both future professionals and active participants in a changing world. This presentation will explore CARE not as a fixed curriculum model, but as a mechanism for embedding reflection, justice, and sustainability into learning design. It will argue that the future of education lies in approaches that are not only skills-based or knowledge-driven, but human-centred and context-aware. CARE offers one such pathway: relational, reflective, and grounded in the creative, uncertain process of becoming.