Unintended Hidden Curriculum: How to deal with it?

-


Given the meaning of hidden curriculum as ‘implicit message’ from school ethos (Jackson, 1968), it is the school vision that becomes pillar to sustain positive school climate. When all components in school system are integrated and stay ‘on the right track’ as demanded by stakeholder,  school can play its role and existence to be main contributor and catalyst of change in the society. These are the role and existence which are significantly desirable to counterbalance the incoming ‘new’ values as product of modernization.

In the classroom and within the curriculum track, students might easily explain what the subject is all about. It is all formally organized and mentioned in the curriculum. The procedures, approaches and methodologies for formal teaching-learning activity are ruled out in the curriculum. The outcomes (action, behaviour, and values) which are expected by curriculum are clear and well-defined. However, often times students experience hard time to ‘digest’ the subject, and at the same time, to put it into practice. Value construction through the subject is failed due to the presence of other dominant values. Here the unintended hidden curriculum happens, the ‘outlier’ of formal curriculum, because there is no such strong main value. The word ‘value’ itself is missing.  Most specially in today’s creation of virtual world, students may have conflict with new values as product of intensive ‘unhealthy engagement’ with social media. Looking at the ‘undeniable existence’ of social media, it is very relevant to put social media awareness as part of value education which is, ideally, embedded in each subject.

In many cases, construction of new ‘unexpected and unintended’ values happens in the family where the parents’ role model is ‘sterile’ and can not be well-communicated. The school can institutionalize Parents Support Group (PSG). In our school we have this PSG and together with the parents we develop focus group discussion. This platform is very helpful to identify creation of new values within the trend of ‘social media connectivity’ and  to give recommendation for further research opportunity. Other productive aspect of focus group discussion is to develop database for all values classified under unintended hidden curriculum. This database can be used for curriculum workshop.(c) ignherisw2017






Popular posts from this blog

ON REFLECTIVE THINKING

-
Image
I very much concern on reflective thinking session as the medium or tools to make better understanding to the definition of God. Reflective thinking is very effective in terms of the way to questioning my existence to this life. Life should be able to be questioned instead it will be a very “dead and meaningless” one. Questioning life is also questioning myself with all strengths and weaknesses. The “quality” of my reflective thinking is questionable to deal with strengths and weaknesses I should work out. In certain cases it is very hard to adjust with flexibility….the same with adjustment in the new atmosphere or environment. Sometimes it is like an “allergic” syndrome to greet the coming of “newness”. Experiencing from my past when I came here as the only “foreigner”. All my fellows here are Filipinos with well-placed attributes in their own cultures, characters, exclusive solidarity, etc. What I feel as excluded person is that the feeling of lonesome, painful…and that being “in des...
Read more

BECOMING MYSELF

-
In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be, and in order to find myself I must go out of myself, and in order to live I have to die. The reason for this is that I am born in selfishness and therefore my natural efforts to make myself more real and more myself, make me less real and less myself, because they revolve around a lie. (THOMAS MERTON)
Read more

ONE MORE ABOUT SPIRITUALITY...

-
Image
It’s odd that after thousands of years of great spiritual example and literature we have to remind ourselves that spirituality is to be found in everyday life. The world’s sacred poetry, ritual, prayer, and art are filled with images of incarnated divinity, or the eternity that lies, admittedly sometimes hidden, in the temporal, or the transpersonal that animates our personal lives. Hundreds of times painters have taken up theme of the “Annunciation” and have pictured that moment, that eternal moment that is in all our lives, when the angel evident in Tibetan tangkas and in Indian sculptures and when William Blake says, “Eternity is in love with the production of time.” (Thomas Moore) So.... Spirituality is a mistery in the terms that it is difficult to logically explain instead it is a concept to be experienced. This life offers time to think about it through a number of moments. The high degree of spirituality understanding could be found in the perception of consciousness towards li...
Read more