Unveil Awareness

Abstract

In this project, I research how to unveil the hidden curriculum in Design Education. The hidden curriculum is the curriculum that students develop tacitly during their studies. It is also defined as tacit knowledge developed in education. tacit knowledge is a part of knowledge that everybody takes for granted without being fully aware of its influence on perceptions and actions. Unveiling tacit knowledge by design students has been considered by several authors a source for students to support awareness in judgments and decision making (Grey, 2018; Vakantesh & Ma, 2019; Wang, 2010; Whelan et al, 2017) because it allows students to become more aware of their perspectives when learning. However, tacit knowledge, as well as the hidden curriculum, are difficult to make explicit (Grey, 2018), because they are hidden in ourselves and our culture (Mareis, 2012). In the course, IDE Academy, a first-year master course in the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of the Technical University of Delft, the hidden curriculum plays an important role for students. The course set up allows students to choose skills to learn in a free-fail environment, thus, the curriculum of the course is highly dependent on the students and their decision making. This means that the hidden curriculum of the students becomes the curriculum of IDE Academy.The aim of this project was to find ways to make the hidden curriculum more explicit in IDE Academy and to contribute knowledge of how to unveil the hidden curriculum in design education.