Exploring liberatory consciousness in social work education abroad: A case study of implementation in Puerto Rico

Many social work short-term study abroad programs (STSAPs) have relied on transformative learning, experiential learning, or cultural competence/humility frameworks, which emphasize knowledge and awareness gains but offer limited guidance for moving students toward sustained action and accountability. The liberatory consciousness framework, in contrast, structures a progression from awareness and analysis to action and accountability/allyship, oriented toward social change. This study applies liberatory consciousness, for the first time in a study abroad context, to a 10-day social work immersion course in Puerto Rico, analyzing student reflection journals to examine how each of the framework’s four elements developed. Findings show strong development of awareness and analysis, while action and accountability were represented largely through stated intentions rather than enacted behavior, a gap attributable to the course’s lack of a structured follow-through mechanism and to a data collection window too brief to observe whether these intentions were later enacted. This diagnostic use of the framework is the study’s core contribution: it identifies precisely where a 10-day STSAP fosters development and where it does not yet demonstrate outcomes, pointing to concrete curricular reforms and longer-term follow-up research needed to close that gap.