Implementing Hidden Curriculum elements in the lower essential grades of primary schools throughout Jordan
Dr. Zakariya Abu-Dabat
Al-Zaytoonah University
Associate Professor
Amman-Jordan
2011-1012
Marj El Hamam
P.O Box 920
11732
Amman
Jordan
Mobile: 00962 799 265 215
Tel, Home: 00962 657 278 42
Abstract
This thesis aims at examining the extent to which teachers of the primary essential stage obtain awareness and enact the main elements of the hidden curriculum; a notion which had been identified and laid down by Philip Hosford, one of the most prominent figures in the field. The results illustrated that both sets of teachers male and female are highly aware of these distinctive elements. However elements of timing came in the end of the category, whilst the element of problem solving came on top of teacher awareness. The study had shown that there were statistical significant differences between male and female teachers, particularly in terms of priority of each examined proceeding element. The female teachers were specifically interested in organizing the classroom and monitoring the acts of pupils, male teachers on the other hand were interested in the expectations (student potential and results), and encouraged pupils to use scientific forms of thinking. There were no significant differences between teachers in the government and private schools in regards to these pedagogical elements.
Key words: Hidden Curriculum, Essential Grade, Implementation, Curriculum Elements, In-Put, Procedures, Out-Put, Evaluation &Feed back.
Implementing hidden curriculum elements in the lower essential grades of primary schools through out Jordan
Introduction
The elementary stage is of significance in the educational system, especially in the lower stage. For this reason educators had focused solely in dedicating studies towards this stage that extends from the age of six to eight according to the educational system in Jordan. .
It is a fundamental stage in life where the child’s behavior and character is formed; indicating the features of a child’s future. This was stressed by John Dewey, jean Piaget and Sigmund Freud amongst other scholars and Psychologists. They concentrated on studying the individualism of the individual as an active member within society. They were also concerned with studying the childhood and its impact on forming the child’s character. This raised attention to study the early psychological health and sentimental growth and the effect on the individual’s psychological health and social adaptation (Abu-Dabat, 2007).
Students in the lower elementary stage (the first, second and third grade of elementary school, according to the educational system in Jordan) come to school prepared with a certain amount of vocabulary, behavioral patterns obtained by the family and the outside society. The school polishes and arranges those behaviors in addition to the learned material and works on fulfilling the child’s needs and requirements at this stage.
The process of learning through schools and training helps the child to acquire behavior patterns that are different to those that the child adopts before joining a school, either in a direct or an indirect way.
It is firstly acquired through the child being in direct contact with the educational material and the second is acquired through learning passively. This has a large effect in making the child acquire a group of positive and negative tendencies. (Dewey.J.1961)
Hilda Taba named this kind of experience an ‘Intangible Experience’ and has defined it as ‘mental experiences’ that are connected with thinking methods in terms of organization and performance when the learner goes through pleasant or unpleasant experiences. (Abu-Dabat. Z 1984). Despite the effects of the experiences on the student’s growth, there are sources other than the intended and pre-arranged curriculum that have a particular effect in obtaining different experiences, knowledge, facts, information, generalizations and skills. In addition they have an effect on building their characters and thinking methods. These sources are called silent curriculum or hidden curriculum.
Hidden Curriculum or Silent Curriculum
The term ‘Silent Curriculum’ or ‘Hidden Curriculum’ was raised by John Dewey who used the term ‘Collateral Learning’ to point at a group of tendencies which students obtain during their practical life (Portelli,1993).
Jackson considered that the hidden curriculum has a cognitive and behavioral effect that students obtain and build outside what is really arranged, i.e outside the framework of the clear and known curriculum (Jackson, 1968).
Others see that this kind of curriculum is enhanced through a set of hypotheses formed by students, and some of them see that the hidden curriculum is more important than the arranged curriculum, because teachers do not pay attention to it as they focus on their teaching and its content.
It also has the biggest impact on shaping the lives and characters over the long term (Jackson, 2004).
Others see that the silent curriculum has a group of hidden messages that students receive unintentionally, but these messages are below the level of the intended curriculum. (Ryan,1993).
Whatever these definitions are, the fields of the silent curriculum are widely open. They express basic urgent needs to accomplish the demands of the individual’s growth, not only in the elementary stages of learning, but this kind of curriculum leaves its traces and effects clearly on students’ tendencies and values that they obtain and practice in their practical life. As a matter of fact, many educators see that the silent curriculum is acquired in our lives and forms our basic needs. It was therefore vital for the educators to fulfill these teachings; by encouraging their students to find the right tools, in order to achieve their goals and become culturally immersed within their society. (Fallows, 1996).
Problem of the study
The problem of the study lies in the fact that many teachers are not aware of the significance in the silent curriculum within the educational process. It is also important that they present organizational skills and planning, as it has been established that they do not prepare in terms of performance before teaching.
Other factors that will affect the students’ performance, behavior and ability to obtain a large group of values, habits and tendencies is the teachers character and the way of dealing with his or her students to achieve the process of learning ( an important part of the silent curriculum.
While following up on our students in university during teaching practice, it has been empirically observed that the majority of the teachers lacked in a substantial preparation for the lessons to commence. They did not define goals (objectives) and lacked in the concept of a dependable plan. Some teachers leave the class without control during the lessons.
In respect to the observations of these pedagogical techniques and the examination of such intangible processes in relation to these teacher’s lessons; the behavior and skills presented by teachers inside the classroom is of great significance to the educational system in terms of its assessments. It provides a motivation to improve the standards of teaching, and the learning process on behalf of the student’s in particular. It ultimately provides new goals and aims within the educational system, thus encouraging a more efficient learning for future generations.
A metaphorical tool presented by Steivcks indicating the process of teaching and learning states that: teaching and learning is like two men trying to cut down and tree and a saw with handles at both ends. If one man stops pulling, there will be no progress. This shows that teaching is a process of ‘give and take’ within the hidden curriculum.
Importance of the Study
This study held a prominent place in the United States, Britain and many other advanced countries, because of it’s importance in the formation of the student’s personality from childhood and what the teacher’s planning methods contain.
The teacher must also leave the students with certified knowledge in their subjects and help in their development. This can be achieved according to the following:
1) The teacher’s plan and organization of the class as (Ritchard.J.1986) confirmed.
2) The student is granted full independence to express himself and his trends towards his teacher and educational material. These aspects play a major role in the learning process, and help him to gain experience in education.
3) If the teacher didn’t notify his students that he is already going to teach them and they didn’t feel able to express themselves, they lose a great deal of motivation. (Rivers, 1983).
Tools of the study
The researcher used a special questionnaire which represented all elements of Philip
Hosford’s category to measure the passive approach before and during the teaching process. Hosford talked about group ranging from the basic elements under each element of T.E.M.P.O. system.
Hosford presented an important query: how can we define the elements of a hidden curriculum to the teacher? It is vital to the research process to put forward an integrated system in identifying the capacity of the teacher’s pedagogical abilities, presenting the extent of their influence of interaction between these elements to be considered: the teacher, material learned and the students. Accordingly we can identify and predict the positive educational outcomes desired. Hosford named this system (T.E.M.P.O).
T- Time on task
E- Expectation
M- Monitoring
P- Problem solving
O- Organization
Hosford has identified five categories for each section of T.E.M.P.O system.
To measure the reliability of the system and category, the researcher adopted the observation reliability equation’.20 x 100 25=8. The desired factor agreement of stability of the form is 80% meaning that the form of T.E.M.P.O. system is reliable.
Questions and Assumptions
From these basic criterias, four questions should be answered,
1) Do teachers at the primary educational level implement the approach according to the hidden curriculum identified by Hosford T.E.M.P.O?
2) Are there differences between the performance of male teachers and female teachers in the implementation of the hidden curriculum?
3) Is there a difference between the performance of teachers in government schools and the performance of teachers in private schools in the implantation of the hidden curriculum?
4) Which of the previous elements (T.E.M.P.O) are more organized for the teachers?
From these questions, the researcher assumes:
1) The teachers of elementary schools do not look after the grounds of organizing the educational stand, according to Hosford’s categories
2) There is no statistical significance between teachers in applying the hidden curriculum according to Hosford’s regulations
3) There is no statistical significance between the teachers of public schools and their peers in private schools in applying the hidden curriculum according to Hosford.
4) Teachers don’t take into account the elements of the hidden curriculum with the elements of the hidden curriculum with the same amount of concern.
Subject of the study
Four schools have been chosen at random, two of which were private and two were selected state schools allocated in west Amman. Twenty teachers were then selected (both male and female), they were divided by a selection of 5 teachers per institution.
This sample provides a full representation on the subject because the study relies on direct viewing and examining, (Al- Jadery, Adnan, 2007) on the other hand this operation would also consume a large amount of time and effort. (Ibrahim, 2005).
Procedures and Limitation of the study
The researcher relied on ethnographic observations during the visits to each teacher of the third grade, during the first semester of 2011 / 2012. This observation was of significance, as the third grade is considered the final stage of learning, where the child’s learning competence is identified in terms of reading, writing, as well as the ground rules of math and the start of a linguistic outburst. It is also a fundamental stage whereby the students are encouraged to develop personal qualities, and excel as individuals. On the other hand it can be argued that the third grade is just a representative sample of the elementary stage which includes first , second and third grades only.
Before each visit, the researcher informed the school teachers of the observations made. However, details of the procedure were not explained, in order to present a true and accurate nature of the teachers and their students.
The teachers were unaware that the TEMPO measurement was being used.
Previous studies
Related researches in respect to analyzing the pedagogical discourses of the teachers, as well as the competence of the students, provided several arguments in relation to this study.
This discourse includes activity elements, classroom interaction (linguistic, scientific) and explaining concepts, as well as learning strategies inside the classroom and other such studies (Keshk and Wahbah).
Both researchers used empirical observation techniques in order to collect data; an average was then recorded in order to clarify the interaction between the student and their teachers. The recordings were taken from the four core subjects (Arabic, History, Math and Science). There was also a study that clarified the positive effect of classroom discourse in teaching ‘science’ in elementary school, and how it helped the students’ understanding of scientific concepts. (Al-Hormozi, 2006)
Concerning the behavioral aspects Abdul- Rahman (1992) performed a study that showed the effect of teachers when dealing with students in respect to ‘harshness’ and ‘leniency’ and their impact in academic achievement. The study indicated that flexible teachers resulted in more interactive students.
A renowned study in regards to the hidden curriculum, is the one that handled the influence of meta-cognitive teaching strategies and practice and developing experience and activities that goes on with different mental stages (Al-Zyadat, 2003).
This type of thinking can not be taught directly. Circumstances must be set concisely to achieve this long term goal. (Hafsa. H, Taher 2011). Research had also been conducted, to assess the effect of teaching and student acquisition of knowledge in different subjects; away from school books or the conformist methods of teaching. such as the research carried out by Lubliner (2001) suggesting that acquiring the ability to understand and absorb using unconventional strategies in learning is more effective than planning ahead using conventional methods.
It was revealed that certain profound teaching methods had lead the students to acquire a diverse range of concepts and thinking methods which were identified by Fashion (1998) as self regulation in monitoring the individual and cognitive activities consciously, he had used the elements of these methods (Fashion 1998).
Another renowned study in this field (measuring the hidden curriculum) is the one carried out by (Hosford.L, 1984). In 1960 Hosford put a list of twenty educational goals that he narrowed down to four after presenting it to professional educators. He created a list to measure the skills of thirty teachers as casting members. Ten of which did not pass the exam, although they were very educated and professional in their own majors, they did not exhibit certain teaching skills in the classroom. Their social relations with the students lacked in addition, the percentage of absences for their classes were high.
When the students were reminded of these teachers, they showed a sense of resentment. The students had claimed that certain teachers presented an authoritarian tendency, and therefore had failed to achieve three out of the four goals.
These goals are:
1) Stimulating willingness among students to learn.
2) Failing in self development and acceptance
3) Honoring and respecting others
Despite his linguistic interest, Galeb Gatingo focused on examining the process of teaching. He especially addressed the importance of the hidden curriculum. He considered such a curriculum as a process, then emphasized on ‘time investigating’ by teacher and students alike.
(Galeb, Gatingo 1976 , available at www.arabsgate.com)
Gatingo searched the intellectual side in organizing the hidden curriculum and established that when the teacher does not plan his / her performance and procedures, their students do not recall their previous experiences and can not reconstruct a new learning experience. Accordingly, direct learning becomes an emotional effort. Indirect learning will help students to develop experience which later on shapes their personal identities.
Previous studies based on this domain are that of the Mines and Reynolds’s study. This was under the title of creating certain guidelines for learning.
They laid down basic elements for the measurement of learning in British schools, both Primary and Secondary.
1) Classroom Administration
2) Behavior Administration
3) Influence of classroom preparation on the student s achievement
4) The general atmosphere of the classroom
The researchers conclude that each element especially classroom management (Time on Task) has the largest effect in the student’s performance, and gained many positive attitudes towards the subjects learnt or intended to be learnt.
The results had also showed a positive attitude towards the teachers and a willingness to learn. (Daniel and David 2007).
There are many researches which investigate the effect of the hidden curriculum on student performance in colleges that specialize in medicine and economics in particular. The domains of this type of curriculum are of a broad spectrum. As educators, we are interested in the effects of this curriculum on a student’s growth in education and personal qualities.
In order to answer the questions of the study, ensure the hypothesis is certified , after conducting observation process and filling the designed questionnaire, the researcher concluded the following:
1) Do teachers in the primary stage consider and address the elements of hidden curriculum according to Hosford’s elements (T.E.M.P.O)?
To answer this question, means and standard deviations for the five dimensions of the hidden curriculum were calculated. The findings were as follows:
Table one
Means and standard deviations for the extent of primary school teachers applying the hidden curriculum elements.
| Numbers | Elements | Means | Standard Deviation |
| 1 | Problem solving | 15.40 | 4.21 |
| 2 | Organizing | 15.30 | 5.49 |
| 3 | Observing | 14.60 | 3.79 |
| 4 | Expectations | 14.20 | 4.49 |
| 5 | Time of tasks | 13.30 | 3.69 |
| Hidden methodology elements | 72.60 | 15.56 | |
Table (1) shows that the primary school teachers take care of the hidden curriculum elements, before and during the lessons. Accordingly we refuse the first hypothesis.
In order to answer the second question: Are there statistical differences between the performance between male and female teachers, with respect of applying the elements of the hidden curriculum?
An independent sample T-test was carried out and the findings were as follows:
Table Two
T-Test findings for the extent of primary school teachers for the elements for the hidden curriculum according to gender
| Variable | Teacher Gender | Mean | Standard Deviation | T-Value | Freedom Degree | s.s |
| Time of Task | Male | 12.6 | 4.6 | 0.843 | 18 | 0.41
|
| Female | 14.6 | 2.5 | ||||
| Expectations | Male | 14.8 | 0.587 | 18 | 0.56 | |
| Female | 13.6 | 5.1 | ||||
| Observing | Male | 12.8 | 3.9 | *2,37 | 18 | 0.029 |
| Female | 16.4 | 8.1 | ||||
| Problem solving | Male | 13.7 | 2.4 | 1.79 | 18 | 0.089 |
| Female | 17.0 | 3.8 | ||||
| Organisation | Male | 11.3 | 4.4 | **4.78 | 18 | 0.001 |
| Female | 19.3 | 2.9 | ||||
| Total Dimentions | Male | 64.9 | 16.7 | **2.29 | 18 | 0.002 |
| Female | 80.3 | 10.1 |
* The level of statistical significance < than0.05
** The level of statistical significance < than 0.01
The above scale shows a statistical significance within the elements of the hidden curriculum in favor of the female teachers. The statistical significance value is less than 0.05 and the arithmetic mean of females’ scores is hire than mail teachers.
The results shows no statistical significance in the scopes of: time on task, expectations& problem solving , which means that both mail teachers & female teachers are aware about the scopes & elements of hidden curriculum.
Explanation Of The Results
From the previous results we discern the extent of interest of teachers to organize the classroom in the schools of Jordan contrary to expectations, where the results are promising for education in Jordan and promising signs that the efforts being made to bear fruit, but there are regulatory elements must be alert her from time to time and the other for will assess the work and make the educational process in order to achieve its objectives. It is noted that there was no statistically significant differences between male and female teachers in public and private schools for the organization of the educational process indicates that the public schools is keen as the private schools for the development of performance which enhances the school and continue support and competencies that are worth.
Recommendations
The Researcher recommends the following:
1) The need for further research sheds light on the extent of the impact of the underlying elements of the approach to the collection of scientific students and giving them the positive trends and experience nanny and other patterns of behavior different.
2) The need to alert the teachers always by the departments of education and educational guidance to take into account the element of time and the time to teach because it is a very important element to achieve the desired educational goals, they were the results for this element is very modest.
3) Need to focus on the element of behavioral expectations and knowledge of any so-called product of learning, which must be in priority after the use of time in teaching and not wasted.
4) The results of the parameters for the two follow-up and organization satisfactory results of either the teachers did not like and vice versa for the racial expectations and raise the skill to solve problems and use appropriate methods to achieve this goal, so it is hoped that the focus of each party on the strengths and consolidation and to identify weaknesses and avoid them.
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