Author: Ajay Kapur, Breda University of Applied Sciences, Ph.D candidate

Background and Context

Higher education faces a pedagogical paradox: How can institutions engage students in urgent current affairs without sacrificing depth, disciplinary rigor, and pursuit of universal knowledge? This tension intensifies in professional education, where market pressures position technical competencies and humanistic concerns as competing priorities. The Music Saves Ukraine project at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) offers an instructive case study in resolving this dichotomy.

In January 2025, Year 2 Live Music and Dance Events (LMDE) students organized eight charity concerts across the Netherlands' leading music venues spanning house, rock, jazz, hip-hop, and carnival. Each event attracted approximately 100 attendees. All proceeds supported the Shpaniv School of Arts in Ukraine, a music education institution serving 284 students where classes continue despite air raids and power blackouts.

What makes this case pedagogically significant is that students typically less socially engaged discovered civic purpose through professional mastery. Although self-selection for a specialization does not imply the amount of social engagement of students, the outcome seems to represents an unexpected 'bycatch'. Students developed global citizenship consciousness while pursuing event management competencies, suggesting professional education and humanistic engagement need not compete.

Research Question

How can professional education programs engage students in current affairs while maintaining pursuit of universal knowledge? Specifically, what pedagogical design principles enabled LMDE students to develop both event management expertise and civic consciousness through organizing humanitarian response?

Theoretical Framework

The analysis integrates complementary frameworks. Kolb's (1984, 2015) experiential learning cycle serves as the primary lens, mapping student learning through concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation across the eight-event series.

Mezirow's (1991, 2000) transformative learning theory explains how typically less engaged students underwent perspective transformation through disorienting dilemmas and critical reflection.

Biesta's (2009, 2010, 2015) three functions—qualification (knowledge and skills), socialization (cultural integration), and subjectification (autonomous agency)—demonstrates the project achieved all three simultaneously.

Methodology

This qualitative case study employs student reflections documenting learning across the eight-event series, venue partner feedback, fundraising outcomes, attendance figures, and faculty reflections. Analysis examines how event production enabled experiential learning, what triggered perspective transformation, and how faculty structured transformative education.

Key Findings

Three pedagogical insights emerge. First, student agency in cause selection transforms instrumental learning into meaningful engagement. Students independently researched and selected the Shpaniv School of Arts—not faculty-assigned charity but student-driven investigation aligning with their professional identity.

Second, professional venue partnerships elevate technical rigor and civic legitimacy. Students organized events in partnership with venues maintaining professional standards and operational accountability, embedding them in authentic workflows rather than university spaces.

Third, genre diversity creates inclusive engagement pathways. Events spanning house, rock, jazz, hip-hop, and carnival represented deliberate plurality. Students with different musical identities found resonance while demonstrating humanitarian concern transcends subcultural boundaries.

Discussion and Implications

The project demonstrates engaging students in current affairs need not compromise disciplinary depth when current affairs become the context for applying knowledge rather than distraction. Ukraine was not a departure from event management education but its most meaningful instantiation.

This challenges liberal versus professional education debates. Students didn't abandon rigor for humanitarian sentiment—they discovered rigorous event management was their humanitarian contribution.

Transferable design principles include: (1) grant students agency in structured cause selection and format diversity, (2) develop accountability through professional partnerships maintaining disciplinary standards, and (3) design structures allowing iterative learning.

Limitations and Future Research

Success depended on access to established venue networks—not universally available. While students researched the Shpaniv School, deeper engagement with cultural preservation, post-conflict reconstruction, or geopolitics could enrich learning. Future iterations might incorporate structured reflection moving from instrumental charity toward critical global citizenship, examining geopolitical complexity and power dynamics of Western aid. Faculty's role in developing and assessing meaningful education needs further exploration.

Conclusion

The Music Saves Ukraine project demonstrates meaningful education encompasses practical application within society through authentic engagement with real-world problems. Students initially less socially engaged discovered civic engagement aligned with their professional identity. Effective faculty create conditions rich with possibility while respecting students' agency in determining meaning. Integrating academic rigor with community engagement creates transformative learning experiences benefiting students, faculty, and communities served.

Contemporary Higher Education (HE) is increasingly defined by the "massification" of student cohorts and the restrictive pressures of funding cuts and global rankings. In this climate, educators find themselves navigating the tension between finite resources and the urgent need to be impactful. Moving beyond the traditional role of information transmitters, educators are now called to be facilitators of student agency, creating spaces for reflection, dialogue, and experimentation. Such spaces are essential for students to navigate increasingly complex and uncertain landscapes with confidence. This paper introduces Croí (Irish for "Heart"), a novel digital tool and learning process developed at Munster Technological University (MTU) that contributes to addressing these systemic pressures by fostering trust and the co-creation of knowledge.

Aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education), Croí serves as a foundation for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). It is designed to help students clarify their values and goals, integrating them into their work to foster personal and ethical growth. Research indicates that the process develops a stronger connection to self and a greater motivation to act, equipping students to communicate effectively within modern complexity. This core development can lead to responsible development—constructive rather than destructive—with potential benefit to the environment, economy, and culture.

The current iteration of Croí was co-developed by a multidisciplinary team comprising Graphic Design and Business Information Systems (BIS) academics. While the framework's initial efficacy was established through a study of 100 Graphic Design students across Ireland and the United States, this paper extends that research by evaluating its impact on a different cohort: BIS students. Methodologically, the evaluation involved workshops conducted during 2024 and 2025 with approximately 50 BIS students. Data gathered from these sessions underwent rigorous thematic analysis to identify key developmental trends across disciplines.

Two central themes emerged concerning the impact of the Croí process. First, the exploration of values proved to be a critical factor in how students navigated their personal and career pathways. By addressing the value conflicts inherent in modern education, the process allows students to cultivate self-awareness and identify core beliefs applicable to professional practice. Second, students demonstrated an enhanced commitment to act. This emphasis on "behavioural intention" is a cornerstone of the Croí model, ensuring that the learning process results in active, constructive contributions rather than purely theoretical shifts in perspective. Furthermore, to ensure a robust approach, the tool is undergoing further internal and external educator peer reviews. Interviews will be analysed and findings presented as part of this paper.

Findings in relation to student impacts suggest that Croí offers a scalable solution to the resource constraints of modern HE by providing a structured yet flexible framework for agency. While not a panacea for all systemic issues, it provides a teaching and learning model that facilitates students in the process of "becoming" rather than just "learning." By bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and ethical action, this tool offers a blueprint for disciplines to build trust and co-create knowledge. Ultimately, Croí empowers students to navigate global uncertainties with purpose, supporting the transformation of high-pressure information hubs into heart-centered environments of personal and societal growth.

Higher education institutions are often positioned as spaces of reflection rather than intervention during times of crisis. However, political theory suggests that moments of crisis are precisely when action in the public realm becomes decisive. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of action and the space of appearance (Arendt, 1958) and Giorgio Agamben’s analysis of crisis governance and the state of exception (Agamben, 2005), this paper examines how higher education institutions in Lithuania engaged with migrant children’s education during the 2021 migration crisis, situating this engagement within a broader analysis of media discourse and its silences.

In this study, wordless racism refers to forms of racialization that operate through omission, selective visibility, and institutional prioritization rather than explicit racial language. This conceptualization builds on recent scholarship that highlights silence and normalization as key mechanisms of contemporary racism and exclusion (Masoud, Kurki & Brunila, 2023; Quassoli & Colombo, 2023).

The first part of the paper analyzes national press coverage as a key arena of public information and meaning-making. Using the MediaCloud platform, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of major Lithuanian news outlets (2020–2022) demonstrates that migration was predominantly framed through security-oriented terminology such as “migration crisis,” “hybrid attack,” and “threat to national security.” Recent migration research shows that such crisis framing contributes to the securitization and crisification of migration, prioritizing emergency governance while marginalizing social and educational concerns (Planas Gifra, 2024). Within this discursive context, migrant children’s education appeared only episodically and failed to become a sustained topic of public debate.

Building on the concept of wordless racism, the paper argues that this discursive absence constitutes a form of racialization through silence. Migrant children were not directly stigmatized; rather, they were rendered politically invisible and excluded from what Arendt defines as the space of appearance, where individuals become publicly recognizable through action and speech (Arendt, 1958).

The second part of the paper shifts from discourse to practice through qualitative case studies of volunteer-led educational initiatives in the Rukla migrant camps and in the Naujininkai district of Vilnius. These cases demonstrate how higher education institutions created alternative spaces of action and care through applied learning practices, student internships, and academic engagement, partially countering the logic of exclusion embedded in crisis discourse.

The paper concludes that higher education institutions can function as counterweights to wordless racism when they move beyond observation toward engagement. At the same time, the reliance on volunteerism highlights the fragility of such interventions and raises critical questions about the long-term institutional responsibility of higher education in contexts increasingly governed through crisis and exception (Agamben, 2005).