The hidden curriculum and its influence on Heath Sciences teaching

Abstract

The hidden curriculum can be defined as the unplanned learning that occurs throughout any teaching process. Its study began in the late 1960s in the USA. However, only recently it became the subject of interest to researchers from various disciplines, especially for Medical Education. Moreover, there is neither a single approach to hidden curriculum nor an agreement on its meaning and usefulness yet. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the hidden curriculum as a multidimensional phenomenon that plays a role in teaching and must, therefore, be identified and decoded. So, an attempt was made to review some of the main contributions available in the literature about the hidden curriculum. In this review the hidden curriculum is conceived as the expression of aspects of culture and institutional context that make unexpected students’ learning. We emphasize the hidden curriculum as a potential vehicle of socialization that facilitates or promotes the internalization of rules and values typical of the profession. There is an interesting relationship between the hidden curriculum and medical professionalism, to the extent that acquiring the profession’s values requires complex learning, which often occur in unforeseen scenarios and contexts and outside of what was planned. Identifying the hidden curriculum and recognizing its influence on teaching is a challenge for Health Sciences schools. Incorporating it into the formal curriculum is pending, and students seem to play an essential role in making it visible.