THE IMPACTS OF HIDDEN CURRICULUM ON STUDENTS'AND TEACHERS' ATTITUDES TOWARDS STUDENT-CENTERED LEARNING IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEGREE COURSE: A STUDY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MEDEA

Abstract

Student-Centered Learning (henceforth SCL) contributes in rising high quality education by shifting focus from traditional methods to new approaches. The school curriculum in general and the hidden curriculum in particular is one of the main important aspects of today’s education, as it plays a central role in any educational system and it influences the establishment of any educational approach. This type of curriculum has emerged to raise the issue of some learned principles, norms, and values that are not part of the official curriculum, in a way that teachers' and students' methods and strategies in dealing with it are still vague and need to be clarified. For this reason, this study is conducted to reveal the attitudes, and perceptions of both poles of education, teachers and students, towards the student-centered approach and the impact of the hidden curriculum in implementing this method. A qualitative research method was used in the current study by adopting the grounded theory in the research process. Therefore, an online structured interview was conducted with teachers and students of English in the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Medea. The results of the study revealed thatfor a successful implementation of Student-Centered Learning, a goodunderstanding and acceptability is to be developed in students’ minds in order to be able to change their traditionally passive mindsets towards an active learning orientation, and for teachers to develop a democratic temperament facilitating in redesigning their teaching and methodological skills through the use of the hidden curriculum. The result of data analysis concludes that there is a significant effect of hidden curriculum on the Student-Centered Learning approach, without which the Student-Centered Learning approach cannot be well established, since student-centered learning calls for individuals to be independent and the hidden curriculum has an immense influence on students’character building. This study resulted in acknowledging the importance of the hidden curriculum, and the significance of its impacts on implementing the student-centered approach and improving students’ autonomy.