Dealing with the Intangible: Using the Analytical Lens of Hidden Curricula for a Transformative Paradigm of Sustainable Higher Education

There is a broad consensus that universities have the potential to act as drivers of education for sustainable development (ESD) and constitute fundamental vehicles to explore, test, develop and communicate conditions for necessary socio-ecological transformations. This goes hand in hand with stronger acknowledgment of the societal role of universities and the related need for a new transformative paradigm of sustainable higher education. Before such a paradigm can be established, before higher education can be transformative, universities themselves must be transformed. Despite various pioneer projects and frontrunners of sustainable universities, real transformations are still rare though.

In Praxis: Creating a (Web)Site of Resistance and Disrupting the Hidden Curricula of Academic Socialization

The navigation and socialization within academia is rife with toxicity and a hidden curricula reflective of neoliberal competitiveness, drawn from White cis-hetero colonialist patriarchy. To challenge and resist the toxicity within academia, Communities of Color have created counterspaces to share resources, build beyond the purported individualism, and connect through vulnerability and care. Within this reflection, are the lessons learned of creating one such counterspace through the development of a website— a “site” of resistance.

Ontological Transparency, (In)visibility, and Hidden Curricula: Critical Pedagogy Amidst Contentious Edtech

The steady migration of higher education online has accelerated in the wake of Covid-19. The implications of this migration on critical praxis—the theory-in-practice of pedagogy—deserve further scrutiny. This paper explores how teacher and student-led educational technology research and development can help rethink online critical praxis. The paper is based on a recent research project at the University of Edinburgh that speculatively explored the potential for automation in teaching, which generated insights into current and future pedagogical practice among both teachers and students. From this project emerged a series of pedagogical positions that were centred around visions of the future of teaching in response to automation: the pedagogical potential of visibility and invisibility online, transparency, and interrogating the hidden curricula of both higher education and educational technology itself. Through the surfacing of these pedagogical positions, this paper explores how critical pedagogy can be built into the broader teacher function and begins to identify the institutional structures that could potentially impede or accelerate that process.

The Role of Instructional Design in Surfacing the Hidden Curriculum

This chapter examines the role of instructional design in relation to the hidden curriculum in higher education. It also discusses the potential and limitations of instructional design methods to make explicit different aspects of what is hidden. The hidden curriculum, both offline and online, includes important practices that should be brought to the surface and not left behind as an afterthought. The authors promote a proactive, not reactive, curriculum by arguing that the learning space should guide both formal and hidden curricula. They also urge for the reader to consider the tensions between the formal and hidden curricula in higher education.