Hidden Curriculum

The term hidden curriculum has been used in two quite different ways in curriculum studies. The more common and influential usage refers to student learning that is not described by curriculum planners or teachers as an explicit aim of instruction even though it results from deliberate practices and organizational structures. As coined in 1968 by Philip W. Jackson in Life in Classrooms, the term was intended to bring attention to elementary-school learning that results from students' experience of the conditions of classroom life. Jackson argued that a good part of student success depends on learning how to live in a crowd of other students, how to gain praise from the teacher, and how to respond to the authority of the teacher and the institution. This ...