Reimagining postgraduate curriculum design: a curriculum-facing framework integrating critical being and knowing becoming being

Postgraduate education is under increasing pressure to respond to expanding societal and professional demands shaped by labour market uncertainty, complex global problems, and rapid digital change. This conceptual paper focuses on postgraduate curriculum design in taught master’s programmes and structured doctoral training components, while excluding doctoral supervision practices as a primary focus. It argues that many postgraduate curricula still privilege disciplinary mastery and measurable performance, while critical agency, ethical judgement, and socially situated practice remain implicit or inconsistently assessed. Drawing on Barnett’s concept of critical being and Graham’s knowing becoming being framework, the paper proposes a curriculum-facing model that aligns critical inquiry with reflective identity formation and purposeful engagement in professional and societal contexts. Contemporary developments including artificial intelligence and digital tools, blended and flexible provision, lifelong learning and micro-credentials, and interdisciplinary learning are treated as curriculum design pressures rather than automatic improvements. These pressures create opportunities for access, responsiveness, and new forms of knowledge work, while also introducing risks related to academic integrity, inequity, and superficial credential accumulation. The framework is translated into curriculum implications through design principles that inform learning activities, assessment practices, and programme structures. It also identifies enabling conditions for implementation, including faculty development, workload recognition, and institutional reward systems that value pedagogical innovation. The paper contributes a theoretically grounded and operationally oriented framework that supports coherent alignment between postgraduate learning outcomes and the development of adaptable, reflective, ethically responsible, and socially engaged graduates in complex and uncertain environments.