Values Education and the Hidden Curriculum

Abstract

This chapter focuses on an aspect of the hidden curriculum – the informal learning that goes on in schools, especially in the domain of values and attitudes, as a result of structured activities like registration, assemblies, grouping strategies and classroom organization and responsive activities mainly concerned with keeping order, like rewards and sanctions. The research reported in this chapter focuses upon children’s experiences of school rituals, collective activities and classroom management; on children’s own perspectives and understandings of the taken-for-granted routines of school life; and on what children learn from these things such as how to please the teacher, how to cope with boredom, how to decide whether to obey the teacher or not and how to reflect on what they experience. Thus the purpose of the chapter is to raise consciousness about certain aspects of schooling that are normally merely taken for granted as an implicit part of classroom life and to make teachers more aware of their own practices and of children’s responses. They will then be able to respond more effectively to children’s needs and to improve the quality of their work, particularly in the field of values education.