Darren Tarshis, Suma Cum Laude, 2008 ▬ Measuring what's hidden: how college physics courses implicitly influence student beliefs
(Link)Educators devote most of their attention to students learning the subject matter of a course. What is less recognized by educators, is that beyond learning the content, students’ attitudes, beliefs, and values change too—sometimes in unexpected and unintended ways. When something is not explicitly taught, but students learn it anyway, it is part of the “hidden curriculum.” Because the explicit curriculum tends to focus on content, it’s the hidden curriculum that influences students’ beliefs about the nature of science, and the nature of learning science. This thesis presents a study of the hidden curricula in three different introductory physics courses. All three are second semester Electricity and Magnetism courses at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This research focuses on four dimensions of the hidden curriculum: Process vs. Product, Source of Knowledge, Real World vs. Abstract, and Gender Bias vs. Gender Neutral. In order to measure these four dimensions of the hidden curricula of three courses, rubrics have been developed, and course environments have been observed and measured using these rubrics. Additionally, the impact that varying hidden curricula have on students is addressed by surveying student beliefs. Results indicate that course practices implicitly affect student attitudes and beliefs in a way that might be predictable by measuring the hidden curriculum—especially for students with less strongly held beliefs. Furthermore, the hidden curriculum sends mixed messages to students, and certain course elements have greater influence on students’ beliefs than others (like lecture versus homework).