Secret codes: the hidden curriculum of semantic web technologies

Patrick Carmichael
,
Richard Edwards

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Abstract

There is a long tradition in education of examination of the hidden curriculum, those elements which are implicit or tacit to the formal goals of education. This article draws upon that tradition to open up for investigation the hidden curriculum and assumptions about students and knowledge that are embedded in the coding undertaken to facilitate learning through information technologies, and emerging ‘semantic technologies’ in particular. Drawing upon an empirical study of case-based pedagogy in higher education, we examine the ways in which code becomes an actor in both enabling and constraining knowledge, reasoning, representation and students. The article argues that how this occurs, and to what effect, is largely left unexamined and becomes part of the hidden curriculum of electronically mediated learning that can be more explicitly examined by positioning technologies in general, and code in particular, as actors rather than tools. This points to a significant research agenda in technology enhanced learning.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 575

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Discourse (Volume 33, Issue 4)

Publication milestones

Published - 01/10/2012

Publication status

Published - 01/10/2012

ISSN

0159-6306

External Publication IDs

handle.net: 10547/594598
Scopus: 84866871298

Access to documents

10.1080/01596306.2012.692963

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