Development of the ‘Student guide to the hidden curriculum’

Abstract

The ‘hidden curriculum’ of Higher Education refers to practices, terminology, and norms that students are implicitly assumed to understand, but are never explicitly explained. Most interventions proposed to reveal the hidden curriculum have been designed and implemented in subject-specific contexts with limited scope for wider impact. In collaboration with the Quality Assurance Agency, we designed the ‘Student guide to the hidden curriculum’, which provides a student-friendly glossary of terms, allowing students to arrive at university with some of the hidden curriculum unpacked. In this article, we outline the conceptualisation, development, and staff evaluation of the guide, before sharing reflections on the process of creating a hidden curriculum resource.