Shift

When we hear of the hidden curriculum we can tend to connect it to those negative messages and inequities that too often exist in higher education. But what if we could shift that perspective and decolonize it. What if, instead of focusing on perceived gaps and missing privilege and all of the connected implications, we considered the hidden curriculum in terms of the beneficial learning and interactions that we see take place outside of the lectures and formal learning during study abroad.

In Cree, the word for this is kīmōc (pronounced kē’mooch); it is when you are doing something on the side or on the sly. In study abroad we can see this hidden curriculum emerge on the kīmōc and it is inspiring to be a part of.

It is where building good relationships are prioritized, reconciliation grows, and decolonization thrives on the kīmōc. It is centred in the discourse of internationalization, when students and their professor leave their country and established norms of their places in society. Those higher education priorities that exist in the policies, as flat words on our university websites, come to life in study abroad when we bring together Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and they are able to find those opportunities and experience the disorienting dilemmas of Meziro’s transformative learning theory.

At its most radical, decolonization means “resisting and actively unlearning the dangerous and harmful legacy of colonization, particularly the racist ideas that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) people are inferior to White Europeans.” It entails interrogating and dismantling “power structures that carry legacies of racism, imperialism, and colonialism.” But more commonly, it calls on faculty to address a series of curricular, pedagogical and evaluative challenges.” (Mintz, 2021, June 22)