Negotiating the hidden curriculum: power and affect in negotiated classrooms

Garth Boomer's ideas in Negotiating the Curriculum (1992a) resonate with discussions of shifting teacher and student roles and relationships in the 'student voice' movement. Boomer (1988) critiqued his earlier conception of power in Negotiating the Curriculum, asserting that he would 'now like to write a book on Negotiating the Hidden Curriculum', in which he would conduct an ethnographic 'micro-analysis' of the 'moment-by-moment dance' between teachers and students and the fluctuations in the 'flows and ebbs of affect and primal resistance in teachers and taught' (p. 171). This article takes up this provocation, considering a 2013 meeting of a cross-age student voice group where students, teachers and researchers collectively discussed the meanings and manifestations of the hidden curriculum through exploring Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall (Waters, 1979), other film representations of school, and their own school. Four students and I analysed a transcript from this meeting, considering the dynamics of power and affect in negotiated classrooms.