12th International Congress on Mathematical Education
Program Name XX-YY-zz (pp. abcde-fghij)
8 July – 15 July, 2012, COEX, Seoul, Korea (This part is for LOC use only. Please do not change this
part.)
THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM IN MATH CLASS
Karla Sepúlveda Obreque
Universidad Católica de Temuco
karla_sepulvedaobreque@hotmail.com
This work is the result of a research conducted in Chilean schools and it reveals the hidden
curriculum in math classes through the algorithm as the main teaching objective. This
commitment to the teaching of the algorithm makes the teaching of mathematical concepts and
problem solving heuristics themselves as secondary and makes automation as a primary goal of
school mathematics.
Allocating too much importance to the teaching of the algorithm by the teachers surveyed, conveys
the idea of taxation and unquestioning obedience by the students. Children learn that who has the
power in the classroom, the teacher, is who determines how things are done and there is no other
way to do it, so it is most advisable to follow.
The hidden curriculum in education expressed as a first order algorithm, prevents children can
develop their ability to create and to exercise freedom in the development of a mathematical task.
This translates into a society of adults who are unable to analyze what happens around them,
afraid to question authority and those with little confidence in their own abilities to find ways to
solve problems that surround them. For Bourdieu and Passeron (1993), social reproduction is
achieved through the development of the hidden curriculum in school.
For many teachers and so many people involved in education, the term "curriculum" is not a
problem: its meaning is self-evident. At present there are large discrepancies in understanding the
meaning and functions of the curriculum, thereby teaching professionals are forced to deal with
specific difficulties of curriculum development, to seek new paradigms for study and renewed
ways that allow address the problems of the theory and practice.
The understanding of the curriculum as a construction is expressed in three forms: explicit
curriculum (study programs), null curriculum (what is not taught) and the hidden curriculum
(curricular intentions are not explicit but infuse the curriculum explicit to the point of
submission to their ends), shows the need to renew the traditional paradigm, which only
considers the curriculum as the technical specifications of what should be taught and how it should
be done.
The ideas and proposals for research into the curriculum, make it clear, a position that sees this only as
what is explicit, it is inadequate and makes it difficult for schools to really influence the
improvement of social conditions, cultural and economic community and therefore the students who
go on them much of their time. For Althusser (1991), the school acts as an ideological apparatus
of the state control over people and is responsible for the reproduction of class society.
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Karla Sepúlveda Obreque
From the perspective of the hidden curriculum as stated above means that the interest is to
reinterpret what happens inside the school on the understanding that it is not only an agent of
socialization, but also an instrument of social reproduction is therefore important to reveal if this
acts as tool of perpetuation of productive relations and social conditions rather acts as an element
of change and rethinking of society and the relationships that occur within them.
References
Althusser, L. (1991) “Ideología y aparatos ideológicos del estado”. Londres: New Left Books.
Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J. (1993). “Reproducción en educación, sociedad y cultura”, Morata, Madrid,
Abcde+3 ICME-12, 2012
