The hidden curriculum of YouTube’s algorithmic infrastructure: how teachers navigate, perceive, and select video instructional resources

As a platform hosting billions of videos, YouTube has become a major source for teachers seeking to supplement their curricula. The platform, however, is not a neutral pool of resources. Instead, it is a complex ecosystem where YouTube’s algorithm presents its own form of hidden curriculum. Though research has examined the interaction between this infrastructure and teachers’ selection processes, limited research has explored the role that content creators add to this complexity. To address this, we report findings from a survey of U.S. PreK-12 teachers (N = 393) that explored this interaction, focusing on the channels teachers use, their selection processes, and how they perceive such resources. We found that many teachers sought YouTube videos that were engaging and aligned with their learning goals. Also, despite the credibility of YouTube channels being rarely mentioned by respondents, our analysis shows clear preferences for some content creators over others, with PBS and Khan Academy ranking amongst the highest for both use and trust. Given the near-zero limitations on who can create and disseminate educational content on YouTube, our findings underscore the need to critically examine such platforms, as instructional resources are intertwined with both formal curricula and other digital learning tools.