Social Justice as the Hidden Curriculum: Making “Small” Pedagogical Changes to Promote Equity

Abstract

This article proposes a method for integrating social justice themes—specifically, linguistic (in)equality—within the content of existing courses by harnessing the power of the hidden curriculum. By making “small” changes to their courses and by committing to the study of the effectiveness of such changes, instructors can promote tacit yet impactful messages about the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion that students are likely to carry with them into the future.

Keywords

• hidden curriculum
• social justice
• language variation