A hidden curriculum is a set of lessons "which are learned but not openly intended"[1] to be taught in school such as the norms, values, and beliefs conveyed in both the classroom and social environment.[2] In many cases, it occurs as a result of social interactions and expectations.
Any type of learning experience may include unintended lessons;[1] however, the concept of a hidden curriculum often refers to knowledge gained specifically in primary and secondary school settings. In these scenarios, the school strives for equal intellectual development between its students (as a positive goal),[3] and the hidden curriculum refers to the reinforcement of existing social inequalities through the education of students according to their class and social status. The distribution of knowledge among students is mirrored by the unequal distribution of cultural capital.[4] The hidden curriculum can also be seen as a set of norms and behaviors that are not explicitly taught, and students with limited social awareness, such as students with Autism Spectrum Disorder, may not pick up on these norms without having them be explained directly. This set of norms and behaviors also regards the culture of an environment that is unique to that environment, for example the norms and expectations of an office space would vary from those of a classroom. [5]
Breaktime is an important part of the hidden curriculum in schooling.[6]
Educational history
Early workers in the field of education were influenced by the notion that the preservation of the social privileges, interests, and knowledge of one group within the population was worth the exploitation of less powerful groups.[4] Over time, this theory has become less blatant, yet its underlying tones remain a contributing factor to the issue of the hidden curriculum. Since then, several educational theories have been developed to help give meaning and structure to the hidden curriculum and to illustrate the role that schools play in socialization.
Theoretical inquiries into the hidden curriculum, as cited by Henry Giroux and Anthony Penna, include for example a structural-functional view of education, a phenomenological view related to the "new" sociology of education, and a radical critical view corresponding to the neo-Marxist analysis of the theory and practice of education. The structural-functional view focuses on how norms and values are conveyed within schools and the acceptance of the idea that those norms and values are necessary for the functioning of society. The phenomenological view suggests that meaning is created through situational encounters and interactions, and it implies that knowledge is somewhat objective. The radical critical view recognizes the relationship between economic and cultural reproduction and stresses the relationships among the theory, ideology, and social practice of learning.
Although the first two theories have contributed to the analysis of the hidden curriculum, the radical critical view of schooling provides the most insight.[2] Additionally, it acknowledges the perpetuated economic and social aspects of education that are illustrated by the hidden curriculum.
Aspects of learning
Various aspects of learning contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum, including practices, procedures, rules, relationships, and structures.[1] These school-specific aspects of learning may include, but are not limited to, the social structures of the classroom, the teacher's exercise of authority, the teacher's use of language, rules governing the relationship between teachers and students, standard learning activities, textbooks, audio-visual aids, furnishings, architecture, disciplinary measures, timetables, tracking systems, and curricular priorities.[1] Variations among these sources can create the disparities found when comparing the hidden curricula in various class and social statuses. "Every school is both an expression of a political situation and a teacher of politics."[7]
While the actual material that students absorb through the hidden curriculum is of utmost importance, the personnel who convey it elicit special investigation. This particularly applies to the social and moral lessons conveyed by the hidden curriculum, for the moral characteristics and ideologies of teachers and other authority figures are translated into their lessons, albeit not necessarily on purpose.[8]
These unintended learning experiences can also result from interactions between peers. Similar to interactions with authority figures, interactions amongst peers can promote moral and social ideals as well as fostering the exchange of information. Thus, these interactions are important sources of knowledge that contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum.
Heteronormativity
According to Merfat Ayesh Alsubaie, the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity is the erasure of LGBT identities in the curriculum through the privileging of heterosexual identities.[9] In a quote from Gust Yep, heteronormativity is the "presumption and assumption that all human experience is unquestionably and automatically heterosexual".[10] Laws such as "No Promo Homo" that prohibit the mention or teaching of LGBT identities are considered to reinforce the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity.[11][12] According to Mary Preston, in addition to No Promo Homo laws, the lack of sexual education in schools removes LGBT identities from the explicit curriculum and contributes to the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity.[13] Currently, over half of the states in the United States are not legally mandated to have any sexual education.
Depending on the cultural norm of the school, when students fall outside the heterosexual norm, other students and teachers have been shown to police them back in line with heteronormative expectations.[14] C. J. Pascoe said policing takes place through the use of bullying behaviors such as the use of words such as "fag, queer, or dyke" which are used to shame students with identities outside the norm. Pascoe said the use of LGBT slurs forms a "Fag Discourse." The "Fag Discourse" in schools upholds heteronormativity as sacred, works to silence LGBT voices, and embeds these heteronormative ideals within the hidden curriculum.[15]
Autism
The term "hidden curriculum" also refers to the set of social norms and skills that autistic people have to learn explicitly, but that neurotypical people learn automatically, such as theory of mind.[16] Another aspect of the "hidden curriculum" often taught to autistic students is that of labeling their emotions in an effort to help students avoid alexithymia.[17]
Function
Although the hidden curriculum conveys a great deal of knowledge to its students, the inequality promoted through its disparities among classes and social statuses often invokes a negative connotation. For example, Pierre Bourdieu asserts that education-related capital must be accessible to promote academic achievement. The effectiveness of schools becomes limited when these forms of capital are unequally distributed.[18] Since the hidden curriculum is considered to be a form of education-related capital, it promotes this ineffectiveness of schools as a result of its unequal distribution. As a means of social control, the hidden curriculum promotes the acceptance of a social destiny without promoting rational and reflective consideration.[19]
According to Elizabeth Vallance, the functions of hidden curriculum include "the inculcation of values, political socialization, training in obedience and docility, the perpetuation of traditional class structure-functions that may be characterized generally as social control."[20] The hidden curriculum can also be associated with the reinforcement of social inequality, as evidenced by the development of different relationships to capital based on the types of work and work-related activities assigned to students varying by social class.[21]
Although the hidden curriculum has negative connotations, it is not inherently negative, and the tacit factors that are involved can potentially exert a positive developmental force on students. Some educational approaches, such as democratic education, actively seek to minimize, make explicit, and/or reorient the hidden curriculum in such a way that it has a positive developmental impact on students. Similarly, in the fields of environmental education and education for sustainable development, there has been some advocacy for making school environments more natural and sustainable, such that the tacit developmental forces that these physical factors exert on students can become positive factors in their development as environmental citizens.[22][23]
Higher education and tracking
While studies on the hidden curriculum mostly focus on fundamental primary and secondary education, higher education also feels the effects of this latent knowledge. For example, gender biases become present in specific fields of study; the quality of and experiences associated with prior education become more significant; and differences in class, gender, and race become more evident at higher levels of education.[24]
Additionally, tracking is another aspect of the hidden curriculum that plays a major role in the development of students. This method of imposing educational and career paths upon students at young ages relies on a variety of factors such as class and status in order to reinforce socioeconomic differences. Children tend to be placed on tracks that guide them towards socioeconomic occupations similar to that of their parents, without real considerations for their personal strengths and weaknesses. As students advance through the educational system, they follow their tracks by completing these predetermined courses.[25]
Literary references
John Dewey explored the hidden curriculum of education in his early 20th century works, especially in his classic, Democracy and Education. Dewey saw patterns evolving and trends developing in public schools which lent themselves to his pro-democratic perspectives. His work was quickly rebutted by educational theorist George Counts, whose 1929 book, Dare the School Build a New Social Order?, challenged the presumptive nature of Dewey's works. Counts claimed that Dewey hypothesized a singular path through which all young people travelled in order to become adults without considering the reactive, adaptive, and multifaceted nature of learning. Counts emphasizes that this nature of learning caused many educators to slant their perspectives, practices, and assessments of student performance in directions that affected their students drastically.[citation needed][clarification needed] Counts' examinations were expanded on by Charles A. Beard and, later, Myles Horton who created what became the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.
The phrase "hidden curriculum" was coined by Philip W. Jackson (Life In Classrooms, 1968). He argued that we need to understand "education" as a socialization process.[26] Shortly after Jackson's coinage of the term, MIT's Benson Snyder published The Hidden Curriculum, which addresses the question of why students—even, or especially, the most gifted—turn away from education. Snyder advocates the thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxiety is caused by a mass of unstated academic and social norms, which thwart the students' abilities to develop independently and think creatively.
The hidden curriculum has been further explored by a number of educators. Starting with Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1972, through the late 1990s, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire explored various effects of presumptive teaching on students, schools, and society as a whole. Freire's explorations were in sync with those of John Holt and Ivan Illich, each of whom were quickly identified as radical educators. Other theorists who have identified the nature of hidden curricula and hidden agendas include Neil Postman, Paul Goodman, Joel Spring, John Taylor Gatto, and others.
More recent definitions have been given by Roland Meighan ("A Sociology of Education," 1981) and Michael Haralambos ("Sociology: Themes and Perspectives," 1991). Meighan wrote, "The hidden curriculum is taught by the school, not by any teacher...something is coming across to the pupils which may never be spoken in the English lesson or prayed about in assembly. They are picking-up an approach to living and an attitude to learning." Haralambos wrote, "The hidden curriculum consists of those things pupils learn through the experience of attending school rather than the stated educational objectives of such institutions."
Professor of communication Joseph Turow, in his 2017 book The Aisles Have Eyes, used the concept to describe acculturation to massive personal data collection; he wrote,[27] "The very activities that dismay privacy and anti-discrimination advocates are already beginning to become everyday habits in American lives, and part of Americans' cultural routines. Retailing is at the leading edge of a new hidden curriculum for American society—teaching people what they have to give up in order to get along in the twenty-first century."
Educational psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning. The study of learning processes, from both cognitive and behavioral perspectives, allows researchers to understand individual differences in intelligence, cognitive development, affect, motivation, self-regulation, and self-concept, as well as their role in learning. The field of educational psychology relies heavily on quantitative methods, including testing and measurement, to enhance educational activities related to instructional design, classroom management, and assessment, which serve to facilitate learning processes in various educational settings across the lifespan.
Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge according to which human development is socially situated, and knowledge is constructed through interaction with others. Like social constructionism, social constructivism states that people work together to actively construct artifacts. But while social constructivism focuses on cognition, social constructionism focuses on collective meaning-making.
Pedagogy, most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are imparted in an educational context, and it considers the interactions that take place during learning. Both the theory and practice of pedagogy vary greatly as they reflect different social, political, and cultural contexts.
Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content. This concept is distinct from experiential learning, however experiential learning is a subfield and operates under the methodologies associated with experiential education. The Association for Experiential Education regards experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities". Experiential education is the term for the philosophy and educational progressivism is the movement which it informed. The Journal of Experiential Education publishes peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical academic research within the field.
In education, a curriculum is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals. A curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives. Curricula are split into several categories: the explicit, the implicit, the excluded, and the extracurricular.
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture.
Henry Armand Giroux is an American-Canadian scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002, Keith Morrison wrote about Giroux as among the top fifty influential figures in 20th-century educational discourse.
A didactic method is a teaching method that follows a consistent scientific approach or educational style to present information to students. The didactic method of instruction is often contrasted with dialectics and the Socratic method; the term can also be used to refer to a specific didactic method, as for instance constructivist didactics.
This is an index of education articles.
Critical literacy is the ability to find embedded discrimination in media. This is done by analyzing the messages promoting prejudiced power relationships found naturally in media and written material that go unnoticed otherwise by reading beyond the author's words and examining the manner in which the author has conveyed their ideas about society's norms to determine whether these ideas contain racial or gender inequality.
Technology integration is defined as the use of technology to enhance and support the educational environment. Technology integration in the classroom can also support classroom instruction by creating opportunities for students to complete assignments on the computer rather than with normal pencil and paper. In a larger sense, technology integration can also refer to the use of an integration platform and application programming interface (API) in the management of a school, to integrate disparate SaaS applications, databases, and programs used by an educational institution so that their data can be shared in real-time across all systems on campus, thus supporting students' education by improving data quality and access for faculty and staff.
"Curriculum integration with the use of technology involves the infusion of technology as a tool to enhance the learning in a content area or multidisciplinary setting... Effective technology integration is achieved when students can select technology tools to help them obtain information on time, analyze and synthesize it, and present it professionally to an authentic audience. Technology should become an integral part of how the classroom functions—as accessible as all other classroom tools. The focus in each lesson or unit is the curriculum outcome, not the technology."
Democratic education is a type of formal education that is organized democratically, so that students can manage their own learning and participate in the governance of their school. Democratic education is often specifically emancipatory, with the students' voices being equal to the teacher's.
The Master of Education is a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. This degree in education often includes the following majors: curriculum and instruction, counseling, school psychology, and administration. It is often conferred for educators advancing in their field. Similar degrees include the Master of Arts in Education and the Master of Science in Education.
Culturally relevant teaching or responsive teaching is a pedagogy grounded in teachers' practice of cultural competence, or skill at teaching in a cross-cultural or multicultural setting. Teachers using this method encourage each student to relate course content to their cultural context.
Inclusion in education refers to all students being able to access and gain equal opportunities to education and learning. It arose in the context of special education with an individualized education program or 504 plan, and is built on the notion that it is more effective for students with special needs to have the said mixed experience for them to be more successful in social interactions leading to further success in life. The philosophy behind the implementation of the inclusion model does not prioritize, but still provides for the utilization of special classrooms and special schools for the education of students with disabilities. Inclusive education models are brought into force by educational administrators with the intention of moving away from seclusion models of special education to the fullest extent practical, the idea being that it is to the social benefit of general education students and special education students alike, with the more able students serving as peer models and those less able serving as motivation for general education students to learn empathy.
The sociology of education is the study of how public institutions and individual experiences affect education and its outcomes. It is mostly concerned with the public schooling systems of modern industrial societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult, and continuing education.
Education sciences, also known as education studies, education theory, and traditionally called pedagogy, seek to describe, understand, and prescribe education policy and practice. Education sciences include many topics, such as pedagogy, andragogy, curriculum, learning, education policy, organization and leadership. Educational thought is informed by many disciplines, such as history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology.
Values education is the process by which people give moral values to each other. According to Powney et al. It can be an activity that can take place in any human organisation. During which people are assisted by others, who may be older, in a condition experienced to make explicit our ethics in order to assess the effectiveness of these values and associated behaviour for their own and others' long term well-being, and to reflect on and acquire other values and behaviour which they recognise as being more effective for long term well-being of self and others. There is a difference between literacy and education.
Feminist pedagogy is a pedagogical framework grounded in feminist theory. It embraces a set of epistemological theories, teaching strategies, approaches to content, classroom practices, and teacher-student relationships. Feminist pedagogy, along with other kinds of progressive and critical pedagogy, considers knowledge to be socially constructed.
Educational management refers to the administration of the education system in which a group combines human and material resources to supervise, plan, strategise, and implement structures to execute an education system. Education is the equipping of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, habits, and attitudes with learning experiences. The education system is an ecosystem of professionals in educational institutions, such as government ministries, unions, statutory boards, agencies, and schools. The education system consists of political heads, principals, teaching staff, non-teaching staff, administrative personnel and other educational professionals working together to enrich and enhance. At all levels of the educational ecosystem, management is required; management involves the planning, organising, implementation, review, evaluation, and integration of an institution.
References
1 2 3 4 Martin, Jane. "What Should We Do with a Hidden Curriculum When We Find One?" The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 122–139.
1 2 3 Giroux, Henry and Anthony Penna. "Social Education in the Classroom: The Dynamics of the Hidden Curriculum." The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 198 100–121.
1 2 Apple, Michael and Nancy King. "What Do Schools Teach?" The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 82–99.
↑ Kaggelaris, N. - Koutsioumari, M. I. (2015), "The breaktime as part of the hidden curriculum in Public High School", Pedagogy theory & praxis 8 (2015): 76-87 .
↑ Kohlberg, Lawrence. "The Moral Atmosphere of the School." The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 61–81.
↑ Chesir-Teran, Daniel (2009). "Heterosexism in high school and victimization among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning students". Journal of Youth and Adolescence. 38 (7): 963–975. doi:10.1007/s10964-008-9364-x. PMID19636739. S2CID31080465.
↑ Puchner, Laurel (2011). "The right time and place? Middle school language arts teachers talk about not talking about sexual orientation". Equity and Excellence in Education. 44 (2): 233–248. doi:10.1080/10665684.2011.563182. S2CID143667653.
↑ Ishaq, Muhammad (2018). "4.1.3 Teaching labeling emotions to label their own"(PDF). Teaching of Hidden Curriculum to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Master's). SCHOOL OF EDUCATIONAND COMMUNICATION (HLK) Jönköping University.
↑ Gordon, Edmumd W., Beatrice L. Bridglall, and Aundra Saa Meroe. Preface. Supplemental Education: The Hidden Curriculum of High Academic Achievement. By Gordon, Edmumd W., Beatrice L. Bridglall, and Aundra Saa Meroe. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. ix–x.
↑ Greene, Maxine. Introduction. The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. By Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 1–5.
↑ Vallance, Elizabeth. "Hiding the Hidden Curriculum: An Interpretation of the Language of Justification in Nineteenth-Century Educational Reform." The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 9–27.
↑ Anyon, Jean. "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work." The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 143–167.
↑ Orr, D. (2004). Earth in mind: On education, environment, and the human prospect. Covelo, CA: Island Press.
↑ Sterling, S. (2001). Sustainable education: Re-visioning learning and change. Devon, UK: Green Books.
↑ Margolis, Eric, Michael Soldatenko, Sandra Acker, and Marina Gair. "Peekaboo: Hiding and Outing the Curriculum." The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education. Ed. Margolis, Eric. New York: Routledge, 2001.
↑ Rosenbaum, James E. The Hidden Curriculum of High School Tracking. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976.
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