​Global health inequities have created an urgency for health professions education to tran­sition towards responsive and contextually relevant curricula so that graduates are better prepared to tackle these inequities. Underpinned by a social justice imperative, such renewal processes hold significant implications for students and educators engaging with the curriculum. While many health professions educators and students may agree with advancing a social justice agenda in health professions education, little is known about how students and educators understand responsiveness and how these understandings may influence their implementation and experience of the curriculum.

In this session, we will offer some insights into the range of understandings of responsive curricula and explore the implications of curriculum transformation for some of the role players who engage in and are influenced by this transformation. We draw from a PhD study on students' experiences and perspectives of social responsiveness within the medical curriculum and secondly from a multi-institutional South African study, for the design and implementation of responsive health professions education curricula. 

Key themes include social justice; social responsiveness; critical pedagogy and the student voice, and what these mean for curricula and for our educational practices.

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