The Hidden Curriculum of Qualitative PhD Research

Understanding the unwritten rules, expectations and ways of thinking that nobody explains

I’m guessing you’re here because you’ve chosen to do a qualitative study for your PhD but recently, things have started to feel a bit… slippery.

You were drawn to qualitative research because it values people's lived experiences, and because you're researching something you genuinely care about. However, recently you seem to have unlocked a whole new level of confusing and it’s all gone a bit Alice in Wonderland.

You’re wondering, “Is there something wrong with me? Is there something I’m just not getting? There’s a secret that everyone else is in on and they’ve all conspired not to tell me. Am I missing something really obvious?”.

Or you might have caught yourself thinking in particularly desperate moments, “I should have tried harder in statistics class. Is it too late to learn that now? Maybe I could do quant instead?”.

Let me stop you right there.

No, there isn’t anything wrong with you and no, you probably shouldn’t try to go off and learn quantitative methods right now. Not that they’re not valuable, but qualitative research has appealed to you for a reason and I think you should stick at it.

Now, the other point, “There’s a secret that everyone else is in on and they’ve all conspired not to tell me.” You might be onto something here. However, I don't think there's a secret as such, I think there's something much more interesting than that.

In the 20+ years I’ve been working with qualitative researchers, I think there is a bit of weirdness going on. I tend to think of it less as a secret and more as a hidden curriculum.

Some readers, particularly those from sociology, may recognise the phrase hidden curriculum from the work of Bowles and Gintis. They argued that children don't simply learn the official curriculum at school. Alongside maths, English and science they also absorb the unwritten expectations of school life - how to behave, how to relate to authority and what counts as being a "good" pupil.

I think something similar happens during a qualitative PhD.

There's the visible PhD journey - the formal research process - and then there's the invisible way of thinking that's absolutely necessary to complete it with your sanity intact.

In terms of the visible journey, you can understand the formal research processes. You know you need to do a literature review, design your study, get ethical approval, collect and analyse your data. However, when you get stuck, process alone won’t get you moving again. It's only a command of the hidden curriculum that will really help you out here.

Most PhD researchers stumble across the hidden curriculum by accident as they’re limping towards the finish line like someone who accidentally found themselves running a marathon when they thought they’d just signed up for a 5k. Little flashes of it emerge through conversations with other researchers, conference discussions, online communities or the occasional YouTube video that suddenly makes everything click. They wonder, “Why did no one explain this earlier?”.

That’s why I wrote The Hidden Curriculum of Qualitative PhD Research: Why qualitative research feels so confusing and why it’s probably not you.

In it, I’m not going to teach you how to write a literature review, choose a methodology or link your data to theory - that’s the job of my PhD Survival Guides. Instead, I’m going to help you understand why all of these tasks feel so confusing. When you do, you'll be much better equipped to pull yourself out of the holes you'll inevitably fall into along the way.

By the time you get to the end, I hope you’ll have had more than a few, “Oh thank goodness, it’s not just me then?!” moments.

No, it’s not just you, and there isn’t anything wrong with you. So, the hidden curriculum, let’s dive in – grab a cup of tea and I’ll begin.

This is the introduction to my short book, The Hidden Curriculum of Qualitative PhD Research.

Click here for more details about the book.