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Understanding the BARRIERS Posed by the Hidden Curriculum

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Understanding the BARRIERS Posed by the Hidden Curriculum Understanding the BARRIERS posed by the hidden curriculum Project team: Clare Smyth, Deniz Fujita, Rose Day, Rebecca Munday, Suzi Rockey, Shivani Bhatt, Alex Westlake, Hannah Muskett, Kristi Dingwall, Anna Mountford-Zimdars, George Koutsouris – for info contact [email protected] Our students’ perspective • ‘I grew up in a culturally diverse and considerably deprived city in the old industrial Midlands. [The university] was a culture shock to my system; it is overwhelmingly white and regularly gripped by racism scandals’. • ‘I knew going back into education as a mature student was going to be difficult and I was going to be different, but nothing prepared me for being ignored and pushed to the outside of the group’. University lecturers’ construction of the ‘ideal’ undergraduate student (Wong & Chiu, 2018) 30 social science lecturers from two post-92 universities in England (semi-structured interviews conducted between 2016-17) Personal and academic skillsets that are desirable of students: • Preparation • Engagement • Commitment • Being critical • Reflective, and • Making progress The ability to achieve high grades rarely mentioned as important • young • white • social The implied • British student • able-bodied (Stevens, 2007; Ulriksen, 2009) • living away from home • without financial worries • or family/ caring responsibilities The third space (Bhabha, 1994) ‘A metaphorical space in which differing cultures meet: e.g. the classroom where home and school cultures practically converge’ (Elliot et al, 2016, p. 740). ‘The hidden rules Hidden Curriculum of the game’ (Portelli, 1993) Hidden Curriculum is a term coined by Jackson (1970) to describe a tendency of school curricula to reproduce the inequalities of wider society. The term gradually took a broader meaning to express any type of often unintentional learning that is not prescribed by formal curricula. Hidden Curriculum (HC) (Bernstein, 1977; Jackson, 1970) • ‘Compared to students at earlier levels of education, adult students have a larger reservoir of personal experience on which they draw when integrating new learning, either through relearning or unlearning what they already know; • […] this reservoir forms part of the HC inasmuch as it affects the way in which students receive new learning and give it meaning’ (Semper & Blasco, 2018, p. 11). Tacit and explicit knowledge The ethos and culture of an institution John Seely Brown’s View of Knowledge through https://valideval.com/thoughts/harnessing-communities-tacit-knowledge How can we make the HC explicit? Semper & Blasco’s (2018) areas to focus in order to uncover the HC: Institutional structures (incentives/ sanctions; routines/ practices; structuring of time/ space); Curriculum (content and delivery of formal curricula; assessment) Relationships (nature of; accessibility; informal communication) Focusing on students’ perceptions of the HC… ‘The greatest success from my point of view was having a voice. We weren’t treated like research Participatory subjects but research partners in the process … right from the beginning through to presenting at research conferences’ (from Vincent et al, 2017, p. 312). Research participant identified as having autism Participation into what? Decision-making? Participatory Research questions? research Selection of methods? Data collection? Data analysis? Interpretations of findings? Dissemination of findings? • A 2018-19 internally funded project • Explored students’ (from diverse cultural/ social backgrounds) perceptions of the HC About the • To make some aspects of the HC explicit • Adopted a participatory approach in that 8 project students from social sciences/ humanities courses were involved as co-researchers • Development workshops throughout the year and focus group interviews (25 students) Assumed students – do tutors assume that students have specific characteristics, backgrounds and experiences? Academic values – how are implicit values Approach for in social sciences/ humanities presented in focus group teaching and how students navigate this? Being one of a kind – how do tutors work interviews - with minorities in the class without scenarios alienating them? Structure of learning – how do tutors navigate student engagement? Example scenario An example scenario: It is Alex’s first seminar at university. Over the course of the Hidden assumptions: • All students are comfortable to term, it becomes apparent that express their own and challenge the lecturer is likely anti-Brexit. others’ and tutors’ opinions When asked to write an essay on • The university is a place where the matter, should Alex argue what different opinions are welcome he believes or what he thinks the seminar leader wants to hear? Reflections from our students/ co-researchers: ‘Taking an “objective” stance in the focus groups was a welcome challenge – and I learnt a lot from engaging with people I otherwise would never have had conversations with because of my own biases’. ‘I think that maybe because this is your first experience at The implied university and because [of where] you come from… Your student: identity is stripped from you and you’re trying to make a first impression and these old, clingy identities […]. reformulating an identity in [This feeling] might wash out a bit, once you figure out the university your own existence at university, if that makes any sense’. environment • Portelli’s (1993) advocation of ‘consciousness raising’ in terms of expectations and purposes ‘I think one really interesting thing about having conversations and close connections and discussions with members of staff – as a student, who might feel like they have less of a right to be here because of their background, or don't feel like they have all of that pre-existing knowledge – [is that it] can really comfort [such feelings]. Interpersonal relationships: It's a form of validation, if a member of staff engages with you in ontological conversation and says, I enjoyed this, come visit me and let’s discuss anything course related or not, that really gives you a sense of this is voice and the also my place, and this is also my space to be in’. role of tutors • Students arrive at university with the expectation that teaching staff will ‘coach their ontological voice’ (Blatchelor, 2006, p. 799). ‘Every single time, it’s very strange, but if I find someone who’s from a working-class background, I’m a lot more likely to be like, friend, let’s be friends. […] We get it and no-one else is talking about it and no-one else gets it, and I don’t… I don’t know what the university could necessarily do to fix that because it feels like small things’. Diversity: seen and ‘Ιt freaks me out because they have things, they’re assessing you on that are applying to neurotypical people. Social skill things, like being unseen polite and not talking over people and responding correctly […]. But dimensions they are also things that do not naturally come to me at all, and sometimes if I am tired, if I’m stressed, I will be in a seminar and I’ll be like, oh, god, I’ve said the wrong thing, I’m going to get a terrible seminar mark. And it can… It’s kind of bad for autistic people, because it’s putting a grade on the thing we can’t do’. ‘Even in politics and international relations, everything Decolonising – or is very Western-centric and that makes the student generalize what they study in class to everywhere else, recolonising the even though it is obviously not a one size fits all thing’. curriculum Education as an ‘uncoercive rearrangement of desires’ (Spivak, 2004, p. 526) Implications – belonging • ‘A sense of engagement and belonging was the common core of successful students’ (p. 35) […] ‘students’ sense of belonging emerged as a key cause of differential progression’ (Anna Mountford-Zimdars et al, p. 92). • ‘I was 18 when I arrived; I didn’t even know what me was and then I just tried to fit into something’. • Students who feel that they do not fit in with the institutions’ culture should be given opportunities to open-up and share their feelings and experiences – institutions should provide the space and encouragement References Batchelor, D.C. (2006). Vulnerable Voices: An examination of the concept of vulnerability in relation to student voice. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38(6) 787-800. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1977). Class, Codes and Control (Vol. 3): Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Elliot, D. L., Baumfield, V., Reid, K., & Makara, K. A. (2016). Hidden treasure: successful international doctoral students who found and harnessed the hidden curriculum. Oxford Review of Education, 42(6), 733-748. Jackson, P. W. (1970). The consequences of schooling. The unstudied curriculum, 1-15. Mountford-Zimdars, A., Sabri, D., Moore, J., Sanders, J., Jones, S., & Higham, L. (2016). Causes of differences in student outcomes. Report to HEFCE by King’s College London, ARC Network and The University of Manchester. Portelli, J. P. (1993). Exposing the hidden curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 25(4), 343-358. Semper, J. V. O., & Blasco, M. (2018). Revealing the Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 1-18. Spivak, G. C. (2004). Righting wrongs. South Atlantic Quarterly. 103(2-3), 523-581. Stevens, M. (2007). Creating a Class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ulriksen, L. (2009). The implied student. Studies in Higher Education, 34(5), 517-532. Wong, B., & Chiu, Y. L. T. (2018). University lecturers’ construction of the ‘ideal’ undergraduate student. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 1-15. .
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