Coffee talk: Negotiating the hidden curriculum of graduate school

The hidden curriculum within public schools has been connected to values, dispositions, and social and behavioral expectations that are rewarded and expected to be learned and adopted by students (Jackson, 1968). Additional work on the hidden curriculum has directly connected the expectations to maintaining race, class, and gender stratification within society (Apple, 1982; Anyon, 1980). Considerable work has focused upon the hidden curriculum within public K−12 schools; yet, little work has looked at the hidden curriculum within graduate education programs. What are the values, dispositions, and social and behavioral expectations of graduate school and the consequences of those expectations? What can graduate students, particularly those with marginalized cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1977), do to understand, negotiate, and resist the hidden curriculum of graduate school?

Duke Scholars

Author Amy Anderson Education