Centering justice in the codesign of mindfulness and compassion-based college curricula

Colleges and universities are increasingly common contexts in which young people navigate the transition to adulthood. Research suggests that mindfulness and compassion may support undergraduates as they navigate this developmental transition. Embedding learning about mindfulness, compassion, and flourishing into college curricula demonstrates promise in supporting undergraduate wellness and academic outcomes. However, there is a need to generate curricula that are relevant to the lived realities of undergraduates and attentive to relational dimensions of wellness, including social justice and systemic determinants of health. Codesign holds promise as a method to generate such curricula. This study used qualitative methods to examine the codesign of an accredited college-level course that teaches about the interrelationship between mindfulness, compassion, human flourishing, and social justice. Qualitative data that emerged during the codesign process were analyzed to answer the following research questions: (1) How did mindfulness and compassion practice support the codesign process? (2) What design tensions emerged during the adaptation and collaborative design of a social justice-oriented mindfulness and compassion-based course? We found that weaving shared mindfulness and compassion practice into the codesign process supported study participants in working with their emotions, connecting with others, and balancing power. In turn, these skills allowed codesign team to effectively grapple with complex design tensions that arose on the levels of vision, approach, and project tensions as the team sought to fulfill its commitments to individual and collective transformation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).