Positioning Prospective Teachers’ Examination of the Hidden Curriculum: A Critical Literacy Context

The presentation discusses the first part of a multi-dimensional study including an innovative instructional strategy to further prospective teachers’ understanding of critical literacy. In a third-year undergraduate concurrent Education course of study, prospective teachers collaborate in small groups to produce a video presentation that examines the implications of a case-based dilemma (the course is delivered in Problem-Based model that includes a social-constructivist approach to learning). As a component of the video analysis, prospective teachers are required to consider the institutional dimensions of the hidden curriculum that potentially socializes secondary school students into dominant socio-political ideologies. The presentation will discuss how the video analyses assignment fosters prospective teachers’ understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP). It will detail how CPR can be envisioned differently by prospective teachers. The instructional strategy invites prospective teachers to think reflectively about how they will encourage secondary school students to be more critical of the socio-political implications of schooling and society. In the context of critical literacy, the instructional strategy fosters prospective teachers’ examination of how CRP can successfully expose secondary school students to the dominant ideologies and inequities that often contribute to the continued marginalization of certain groups in education and beyond.