What Is Hidden Curriculum In Education
Teaching the Hidden Curriculum The term “hidden curriculum” refers to an amorphous collection of “, ” “,” and ” ” of the dominant-culture context in which all teaching and learning is situated. These ” ” stipulate the “right” way to think, speak, look, and behave in school.

  • Since the hidden curriculum invisibly governs academic achievement, it is vital for every student to learn its lessons.
  • Generally, the hidden curriculum will be navigable for students from well-resourced, college-educated families who possess and who are already familiar with the dominant sociocultural “,” Additionally, attending well-resourced high schools with rigorous academics and college counseling augments these children’s and, advantages that help them transition successfully to college.

Unfortunately, not all students have access to such thorough college priming. Students coming from under-resourced high schools often lack college knowledge and rigorous academic preparation and therefore may be unfamiliar with the mandate of the hidden curriculum.

They consequently can struggle or even fail to persist in college. Students specifically at risk tend to be from, including, multilingual, of color, of nontraditional age, from lower socioeconomic status communities, and from immigrant backgrounds. Because not all students are “,” existing evaluatory practices may be invalid and unfair.

If these vulnerable student populations are disproportionately disadvantaged, and educators unconsciously align to the hidden curriculum, this reflects, Writing teachers often have hidden curricula too. We have normative expectations: students will arrive on time to class, read and annotate readings, participate actively in discussion, or express themselves using “,” We hold normative assumptions: students will have computers and reliable access to the internet at home,,

  • We develop learning objectives based on normative beliefs: students will understand what “analyze” and “synthesize” look like in their essays, know how to search online library databases, or be able to judge the credibility of sources.
  • We may operate under the supposition that students will accurately interpret our writing assignment instructions, not plagiarize, and attend to our conscientiously drafted feedback in their revisions.

Our expectations, assumptions, beliefs, and suppositions, thus, may not be fair or even valid. We first can begin to question our own unexamined allegiance to the hidden curriculum. To engender learning and achievement among all our students, it is crucial that we become that all students are equally familiar with educational norms, attitudes, behaviors, practices, and policies that may be second nature to us.

  1. Writing instructors can build explicit instruction of their hidden curriculum into their formal curriculum and pedagogy.
  2. Using rhetorical analysis, we challenge ourselves to reduce the normative filter and so discern where we might need to embed background information, context, or examples in our course content and discussions, especially when communicating instructions for writing assignments that will be graded.

We must conduct ongoing informal assessments of our most vulnerable students’ understandings by checking in with them individually since they may be reluctant to pose what they presume are “stupid” questions in the larger group. Otherwise, those with more familiarity of the hidden curriculum due to demographic circumstances may gain an unfair advantage.
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What is the hidden curriculum explain?

What is Hidden Curriculum is a side effect of education where lessons are learned but not openly intended. Hidden curriculum often refers to norms, values and beliefs conveyed in the classroom and the social environment. Hidden Curriculum often refers to knowledge gained in primary and secondary school settings, usually with a negative connotation where the school strives for equal intellectual development as a positive goal or objective.
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What is the hidden curriculum and why is it important?

The Hidden Curriculum: What are you teaching? James T. Lindroth, Tahlequah, OK A hidden curriculum is an unavoidable issue for music educators that needs careful examination. Hidden Curriculum has been defined as “the unspoken or implicit values, behaviors, procedures, and norms that exist in the educational setting” (Alsubaie, 2015, pp.125).

  • Longstreet and Shane (1993) referred to hidden curriculum as “the kinds of learning students derive from the very nature and organizational design of the public school, as well as from the behaviors and attributes of teachers and administrators” (p.46).
  • Hidden curriculum has also been referenced as a side effect of teaching, having both positive and negative effects on student learning.

Seddon (1983) articulated that hidden curriculum involves the “learning of attitudes, norms, beliefs, values, and assumptions often expressed as rules, rituals, and regulations” (p.3). Hidden curriculum in music impacts students through a variety of ways such as the organizational design of the music program, rules and procedures, classroom environment, and teaching methodology.

These elements become integrated into the classroom which are rarely questioned by students. Fortunately for music educators, we enjoy a great deal of autonomy. It provides us control over our teaching to accurately reflect what and how we want students to learn. This article attempts to mitigate negative effects of hidden curriculum by raising awareness to reveal hidden curriculum in the music classroom and empower educators to use hidden curriculum to create positive effects on learning.

The design of a music program can transmit unspoken messages and values to students. Students receive information from the structure and rules of the program. Careful examination of these factors can help identify potential misunderstandings that a teacher does not wish to express to students.

For example, financial requirements for participation in music programs may send unarticulated messages about who should be involved and valued in music. What music is selected to perform and study may also send unintended messages beyond educational content. How students are to be rewarded or punished can articulate certain attitudes and values as well.

Music educators can reveal hidden curriculum in the program design and ensure that it articulates positively on students. A classroom environment can project values and messages intentionally or unintentionally to students. For example, if biased or prejudicial behaviors and statements are tolerated in the classroom, students may embrace and model those values.

  • Other behaviors that can negatively impact students can include situations deriving from student rituals/traditions and bad student leadership.
  • Through classroom rules and positive modeling, educators can work to prevent these types of behaviors in the classroom.
  • Teachers can create a classroom environment where positive values such as work ethic, leadership, personal responsibility, empathy, team work, and other values are rewarded and honored.

Teaching methods may contain hidden curriculum as well. Students may receive unmentioned messages or develop misunderstandings of concepts. Conway (2017) provided examples of hidden curriculum in common ways music educators teach musical concepts such as time signatures, key signatures, and tonality.

For example, placing meanings on tonality such as minor is “sad” and major is “happy” can create misunderstandings. The teaching of time signatures as a certain beat receives one beat can can become problematic when students investigate triple meter (such as 3/8, 6/8). Building awareness of these types of hidden curriculum and eliminating misunderstandings can strengthen student learning.

The presentation of a lesson also contains hidden curriculum. Just as students can receive negative unspoken messages and values from the way a teacher presented a lesson, they can receive positive ones. Teachers have the opportunity to model positive values such as humility, empathy, passion for teaching, leadership, and other qualities they hope to convey to students.

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I often video record myself teaching a class and invite feedback from students to uncover hidden curriculum and make changes to ensure that hidden curriculum reflects what I wish to communicate to my students. The nature of hidden curriculum is complex because it reflects the design and actions of teaching.

I encourage the use of teacher autonomy to examine the music program critically, how it functions, and bring to light examples of hidden curriculum. Once hidden curriculum is discovered, it becomes negotiable, allowing for change and improvement to the overall curriculum, teaching methods, and student learning.

Hidden curricula teach students beyond the subject content of their courses. An educator can design hidden curriculum to teach positive characteristics such as dignity, humility, hard work, responsibility, and appreciation. Hidden curriculum has the potential to positively impact students and even change lives.

References Alsubaie, M.A. (2015). Hidden curriculum as one of current issue of curriculum. Journal of Education and practice, 6(33), 125-128. Conway, C. (2017). Considering the hidden curriculum in music classrooms. Retrieved from https://www.smartmusic.com/blog/hidden-curriculum-in-music-classrooms Longstreet, W.S.
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What is an example of hidden curriculum in schools?

Examples of things taught through the ‘hidden curriculum: respecting authority. respect for other pupils’ opinions. punctuality. aspiring to achieve.
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What is hidden curriculum and two examples?

The hidden curriculum is all the other things students learn in school that is not explicitly taught or written down ; concepts like friendship, honesty, fairness, the value of work, ethnic relations, and cultural differences.
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What are the values of hidden curriculum?

Hidden expectations, skill sets, knowledge, and social process can help or hinder student achievement and belief systems. A hidden curriculum refers to the unspoken or implicit values, behaviors, procedures, and norms that exist in the educational setting.
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What are the benefits of the hidden curriculum?

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Hidden Curriculum

Advantages Disadvantages
1. Helps prepare us for life in a society beyond school. 1. Reproduces social class inequalities
2. Teaches children to obey elders. 2. Outdated social roles are reinforced

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What is the difference between formal and hidden curriculum?

While the ‘formal’ curriculum consists of the courses, lessons, and learning activities students participate in, and the knowledge and skills educators intentionally teach to students, the ‘hidden curriculum’ is defined as a set of influences that function at the level of the organizational structure and culture that
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What is the conclusion of hidden curriculum?

The Effect of Hidden Curriculum on Creativity and Social Skills: The Perspective of Elementary Schools

/ / / Articles

DOI: Keywords: Hidden Curriculum, Creativity, Social Skills, Elementary School Student. Background: Hidden curriculum in every school may have different side effects on students. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations of hidden curriculum with creativity and social skills among elementary students.

  1. Methods: The research method was descriptive-correlational.
  2. The study population consisted of all sixth-grade elementary students in Roodsar, Gilan (including 616 students) in the academic year 2018-2019.
  3. According to Morgan and Krejcie’s Table, the sample size was 270 students, which were selected by simple random sampling.

The research tools included Taghipoor and Ghafari’s Hidden Curriculum Questionnaire, Torrance’s Creative Thinking Form B, and Matson’s Social Skills Questionnaire. The validity and the reliability of the questionnaires were obtained, using Alpha Cronbach Coefficient and were 0.91, 0.90, and 0.86, respectively.

  1. Regression and path analysis were done for data analysis using SPSS 24.
  2. Results: The findings showed that hidden curriculum has a strong positive and significant relation with creativity in terms of school social climate.
  3. Also, the hidden curriculum had a strong positive and significant relation with the components of appropriate social skills, non-social behaviors, aggression, and supremacy.

In addition, there was no significant relation between creativity and social skills. Moreover, the results of the path analysis showed that hidden curriculum has a positive and significant relation with the four components of social skills and finally.

  1. In addition, hidden curriculum had a significant relation with the students’ creativity.
  2. Conclusion: Generally, it can be concluded that hidden curriculum plays an important role through the implicit transfer of values, attitudes, and skills to students, especially on social skills and creativity, so that these issues need to be given more attention by the educators in every educational setting.

: The Effect of Hidden Curriculum on Creativity and Social Skills: The Perspective of Elementary Schools
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Why is it important for teachers to know hidden curriculum?

What are the disadvantages of the Hidden Curriculum? – Although it might not necessarily seem harmful, several negative effects of the Hidden Curriculum have been pointed out. Below are some of the disadvantages that have been pointed out:

A hidden curriculum can reveal hypocrisy if what a school says it does is not the same as what it does. For example, a school might claim that it wants all students to do well academically, but the hidden curriculum might be teaching students that only those from wealthier backgrounds can do well in school. Learning to obey and not question authority figures – such as a teacher in a classroom – might mean that students are taught and conditioned to obey instructions without asking any questions or thinking about what they are being told for the rest of their lives. The hidden curriculum can often mean that children are taught to accept their teacher’s own views and opinions. Teachers are an important authority figure in a child’s life and one that they see a great deal. This means that they can have a serious effect on a student’s beliefs and actions.

What Is Hidden Curriculum In Education

Because of the unwritten nature of the hidden curriculum, it can be very difficult to make changes when these are needed. Unlike the formal curriculum, which can be read and examined, the hidden curriculum may not be obvious or easy to understand.

What Is Hidden Curriculum In Education This set of Good Friend Discussion and Sorting Cards is a great way to help children think about how to treat their friends and other students, teaching them important lessons. This video below shows another way that values can be taught and discussed in a school setting, focusing on mutual respect,
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Who defined the hidden curriculum?

Summary – The phrase “hidden curriculum” was coined by Philip W. Jackson in his 1968 book entitled Life in Classrooms, in a section about the need for students to master the institutional expectations of school. Snyder develops this with observations of particular institutions.

  • Snyder then addresses the question of why students — even or especially the most gifted — turn away from education.
  • Even honest efforts to enrich curricula frequently fail, says Snyder, thanks to the importance of the tacit and unwritten understanding.
  • He says that while some students do not realize there is a disjunction between the two curricula, in a demanding environment, students develop strategies to cope with the requirements they face.

Many students find they can not possibly complete all the work assigned them; they learn to neglect some of it. Some student groups maintain files of past examinations which only worsen this situation. The difference between the formal and real requirements produced considerable dissonance among the students and resulted in cynicism, scorn, and hypocrisy among students, and particular difficulty for minority students.
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Why is it important for teachers to know hidden curriculum?

A hidden curriculum can reveal hypocrisy if what a school says it does is not the same as what it does. For example, a school might claim that it wants all students to do well academically, but the hidden curriculum might be teaching students that only those from wealthier backgrounds can do well in school.
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What is the importance of the hidden curriculum in people’s behavior?

By Ayesh Perera, published Sept 26, 2022 | Fact Checked by Saul Mcleod, PhD The hidden curriculum, first described by Philip Jackson (1968), is a set of unspoken or implicit rules and values that students learn while attending school. It is often contrasted with the more formalized, official curriculum that is spelled out in a school’s mission statement or lesson plans.

  1. Philip W. Jackson coined the term ‘hidden curriculum’ in 1968 in his book Life in Classrooms, in discussing the students’ need to master their schools’ expectations.
  2. He contended for an understanding of education as a process of secondary socialization,
  3. A conventional curriculum, also known as formal or academic curriculum, involves instruction and the transmission of knowledge in schools to accomplish the principal objectives of preparing students to pass examinations, and imparting to them specific skills.

These objectives, as well as their concomitant routines, structures and rules, are often communicated explicitly to parents and students by teachers and school administrators. The hidden curriculum refers to the informal learning processes that occur in schools.

These processes often have the ‘side-effect’ of transmitting subtle messages to pupils and students about key values, attitudes and norms of behaviour. Although the hidden curriculum is taught in a formal institution, it is a form of informal socialization. The hidden curriculum includes things like the way teachers dress and behave, the way they interact with students, the way discipline is handled, and the overall climate of the school.

While the hidden curriculum is often unintentional, it can still have a powerful impact on students. It can shape their values, beliefs, and attitudes, and it can influence the way they behave both inside and outside of school. These factors can send strong messages to students about what is important and what is not, what kind of behavior is acceptable and what is not, and what kind of people are valued and who is not (Jackson, 1968).

  1. For example, a school that has a lot of rules and regulations may be sending the message that order and compliance are more important than creativity and innovation.
  2. And a school that has a lot of violence and bullying may be sending the message that aggression and force are more effective than cooperation and kindness.

A school that has a strict dress code may be sending the message that appearance and conformity are more important than individuality and self-expression. Education for children is thought to be an agent of socialization to learn appropriate behavior for their gender and contributes to the patriarchal system and structure (Sultana, 2010).

  1. Young girls may be socialized into thinking that there are subjects that are more suited to boys such as mathematics and science.
  2. Feminists view the hidden curriculum as a producer and perpetuator of a gender socialization that disfavors women.
  3. Teachers may respond in different ways to boys and girls (Sadker & Sadker, 1994).

Commencing in kindergarten, teachers may employ gender dichotomies to address pupils, separate them for group activities, and distribute them between adversarial teams for competitions. Moreover, since in elementary level classrooms, boys tend to be more disruptive than girls, they may also receive more attention (both negative and positive).

Studies further suggest that boys attain high status based on athletic ability, toughness, coolness and cross gender relationships, while girls acquire popularity via social skills, physical appearance and their parents’ socioeconomic background. These values may be further propagated via greater financial support for male sports.

Scholars have implied that teachers’ opinions concerning gender differences in science, verbal and math aptitude may shape their pedagogical approach, and thereby, pupils’ interest and performance in various subjects. The relatively higher representation of males over females in textbooks may influence girls’ and boys’ own opinions concerning their aptitudes and their ambitions as well.

For instance, even though, in Wales and England, female teachers outnumber male teachers, senior management of schools and colleges contain more men than women. This lack of salient senior role models may exert a baneful influence upon female students. Moreover, feminist activists Tony Lawson and Tim Heaton (1996) claimed that textbooks subtly promote gender stereotypes (especially via the portrayal of men and women in different roles) and traditional gender divisions in sports and physical education.

They also argue that many educators still entertain entrenched sexist views concerning certain classroom tasks. Radical feminists further complain that the whole educational system is patriarchal, and that it continues to oppress and marginalize women.

They protest that the system espouses the dependency of women upon men, and causes many girls to feel uncomfortable in the presence of boys while studying certain subjects. They, moreover, contend that the system still engenders gender inequalities despite the introduction of the national curriculum.

The functionalist orientation toward the hidden curriculum is primarily concerned with concealed curricula’s reproduction of unified societies. Closely associated with consensus theory, this approach focuses on the utilization of education to maintain order in society by appropriately socializing students.

  • Moreover, Emile Durkheim’s propositions in Education and Sociology (1922), as well as Moral Education (1925), likely foreshadowed the functionalist approach to the yet-undeveloped notion of the hidden curriculum.
  • Durkheim contended that the functioning of society required a high level of homogeneity, and this could be provided by education via highly regulated institutions.

The functionalists hold that the hidden curriculum imparts to children the following:

The value of achievement : the hidden curriculum inculcates a strong work ethic, an attitude of inquiry, personal responsibility, individual initiative, a competitive spirit, and creativity. This is amply evidenced by rewards reserved for students who procure high scores on examinations, praise bestowed on those who raise intelligent questions in class, and the recognition of original ideas in crafting and executing various projects.

School as a microcosm : the school milieu constitutes a scaled-down encapsulation of the society at large in many respects, and thereby provides a training ground for entrance thereto. The norms and values pervading the modern industrial society, consequently, permeate the socialization process which the hidden curriculum propagates. The expectation that pupils arrive by a certain time at school instructs them in punctuality which would be essential to preserving their jobs as adults. Assenting to the school’s cultural norms and learning alongside pupils from different backgrounds, help pupils respect their fellow citizens’ opinions, and coexist with those different from oneself in the future.

According to Marxists the hidden curriculum reinforces social inequality and maintains ruling class ideology. Education encourages students to blindly accept capitalist values, through the hidden curriculum. For example, schools that track students into different ability levels or classes based on test scores may be reinforcing the idea that some students are better than others and that some students are not worth as much attention or investment.

This can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, where students who are labeled as “less capable” may begin to believe it and underperform as a result (Jackson, 1968). Schools in North America have bred a sense of competition among students by the way grades are given and how teachers evaluate them. Students learn to rank themselves amongst their peers with grades (Bowles & Gintis, 1976).

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When children participate in a race or math contest, they learn that society has winners and losers. Bourdieu’s (1977) ideas about cultural capital are part of a wider Marxist argument that the function of education is to reproduce ruling-class culture and class inequality via the ideology transmitted by a hidden curriculum.

  • Noble and Davies’ (2009) research suggests that this reproduction continues beyond secondary education.
  • It can be seen in the reluctance of working-class students to apply for a university place because of a belief that they lack the cultural capital required to fit into university life.
  • Jackson (1964) described the hidden curriculum as the ‘unpublicised features of school life’ in which students learn to accept the unequal distribution of power within schools and society Jackson (1968) described classrooms as places presenting persistent evaluations, crowds and massive differences in power between the managed and the manager.

Herein, as the student crowds’ resources are limited, denial, delay, distraction and interruption enter the student experience. Meanwhile, the teacher becomes a gatekeeper, supply sergeant, participation signaler and privilege granter. In 1970, the psychiatrist and then-Dean of MIT’s Institute Relations, Benson R.

  1. Snyder published a book called The Hidden Curriculum,
  2. Snyder argued that unstated social and academic norms are primarily responsible for much of students’ anxiety and campus conflict.
  3. He strove to ascertain why highly gifted students give up on education, and pointed out that these concealed norms impair the students’ capacity to think creatively and develop independently.

The Marxist approach to the hidden curriculum, initially constituted a substantial challenge to the functionalist view. Marxist theorists contended that schooling primarily caters to the oppressive and powerful social groups and institutions. Employing the term ‘long shadow of work,’ Herbert Gintis and Samuel Bowles (1976) in particular, argued, in their seminal book entitled Schooling in Capitalist America, that students develop a consciousness, internalize norms, and acquire skills that suit their future employment.

They are purportedly educated in a fashion that prepares them for different levels of autonomy, control and ownership in the capitalist system. The relationship between social milieu of production and the social milieu of school life was described as the correspondence principle. Gintis and Bowles argued that the correspondence principle accounts for the correspondence between the schools’ internal organization to the capitalist workforce’s internal organization via norms, values and structures.

For instance, the authors claim that the structure of authority in schools resembles the hierarchy of dominance in the labor market. The head teacher acts as a managing director, while students garbed in uniforms and subjected to discipline take after the lower-level employees laboring under tyrannical supervision.

  1. Moreover, education informs how to govern workplace interactions and affords practical preparation for entrance into the labor market.
  2. The theories predicated upon the correspondence principle are called reproduction theories since they account for the supposed reproduction of social inequalities by education.

Some parallels between the values taught at school and those used to exploit workers in the workplace include:

  • The passive subservience of pupils to teachers, which corresponds to the passive subservience of workers to managers;
  • An acceptance of hierarchy – the authority of teachers and administrators over students corresponding to the authority of managers over employees;
  • Motivation by external rewards (such as grades over learning), which corresponds to workers being motivated by wages rather than the job of a job.

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What is the hidden curriculum and how does it impact students of both genders?

The Hidden Curriculum in Schools The hidden curriculum refers to unspoken behaviors, norms, or values that children learn at school in addition to the official curriculum they are responsible for learning. This hidden curriculum is conveyed to pupils by teachers’ actions and by organizational processes operating inside the school.

Hidden curriculum can include how to act in public, how to interact with authority figures, patriotism, but it also includes an aspect of gender roles. Gender is a major element of the hidden curriculum and is reinforced by specific gender roles that are played out culturally. Although there are indeed clear biological differences between male and female sexes, gender roles are heavily influenced by processes of socialization.

According to Peggy Orenstein in Schoolgirls, “Once used to describe the ways in which the education system works to reproduce class systems in our culture, the hidden curriculum has recently been applied to the ways in which schools help reinforce gender roles, whether they intend to or not.” shows a great example of gender roles being taught in elementary school by highlighting an assignment that a child apparently did incorrectly.

The assignment was to categorize a list of toys and activities based on whether they were for boys or girls. Activities like these encourage the gendering of activities and toys and does not value the fact the child did not naturally gender these items, but is being taught to do so. Although the previous example is a blatant and extreme example of the teaching of gender roles in the school, there are also more subtle ways in which gender roles are taught in the school.

For example, the vast majority of teachers are women which reinforces children’s impression that women are more suited to looking after and teaching children. In the past it has been argued that many teachers supported traditional gender roles and were likely to praise girls and boys for gendered qualities.

  1. Another example is that children may be asked to help around the school in gender specific ways such as moving furniture for boys and helping clean or serve food or drinks for girls.
  2. A major example of emphasizing gender differences can be found in the differences in boys and girls school uniform rules.

Often girls must wear skirts and are not allowed to wear pants although they may be more comfortable in pants. In Schoolgirls, Orenstein notes that the hidden curriculum encourages certain behaviors from the genders. The hidden curriculum teaches girls to value silence and compliance, and to view those qualities as a virtue.

  1. The hidden curriculum teaches boys to be loud and outspoken, by encouraging their disruptive behavior with attention.
  2. Orenstein notes from her ethnography at Weston Middle School, “In fact, students tend to believe that, although they pay more attention to the boys, teachers actually like the girls better: as one Weston girl once told me, “teachers like us because we’re nicer, quieter, and better behaved.”” The separation of the genders into categories starts at an early age, but is further perpetuated by these distinct behavioral differences that the hidden curriculum is partly responsible for creating.

This hidden curriculum comprises the unstated lessons that students learn in school and because of the current state of the existence of gender roles in our society it’s practically inevitable. It is the running subtext through which teachers communicate behavioral norms and individual status in school culture, the process of socialization that cues children into their place in the hierarchy of larger society.

The acknowledgement of this hidden curriculum by educators is the first step in eliminating teaching gender roles to children through the hidden curriculum. goes into further detail about the teaching of gender roles and how that teaching plays out in the classroom. It goes into detail about specific instances in teaching that unintentionally teach gender roles, such as males frequently being portrayed as brave hero’s in children stories for example.

: The Hidden Curriculum in Schools
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