An open pedagogy partnership to challenge the hidden curriculum in an undergraduate research classroom

This paper examines how open pedagogy can challenge the hidden curriculum in undergraduate research classrooms. The hidden curriculum teaches unspoken lessons about power, knowledge, and social norms through institutional practices that shape how students understand research and inquiry. Undergraduate research classrooms are critical sites where the hidden curriculum’s implicit lessons are present and must be addressed. Librarian-faculty partnerships can develop strategies to make visible the tacit knowledge systems typically hidden from undergraduate researchers. This paper shows how open pedagogy enables a learning environment in which the implicit lessons become visible through redesigning the physical classroom space, reframing classroom behaviors, and restructuring the course with an open syllabus and guided journals. These strategies are rooted in transparency, student agency, and collaborative knowledge creation and are highly transferable to a variety of teaching and learning contexts.