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 things have started to feel a bit… slippery. You like how qualitative approaches value people’s lived experiences and you’re researching something you genuinely care about so that’s why you felt drawn to it. 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.

In the 20+ years I’ve been working with qualitative researchers, I think there is a bit of weirdness going on.

I don't think there's a secret as such, I think there's something much more interesting - a hidden curriculum.

Sociologists will 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 qualitative PhD journey of the formal research process, and then there’s the invisible way of thinking that’s absolutely necessary for your PhD progress but rarely explained.

You can understand all of the formal research process – knowing that you need to do a literature review, design your study, get ethical approval, collect and analyse your data – but 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.

Most PhD researchers stumble across the hidden curriculum by accident, in bits and pieces, often towards the later stages of their journey when they’re exhausted and limping towards the finish line like someone who accidentally found themselves running a marathon when they thought they were just signing up for a 10k.

Many researchers only discover the hidden curriculum by accident - through conversations with other researchers, conference discussions, online communities or the occasional YouTube video that suddenly makes everything click. By then they're often well into their PhD wondering why nobody explained these things earlier.

That seems like a bit of a long way around to discover the hidden curriculum.

Now, let me be clear - 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 understand that, you’ll be much better equipped to pull yourself out of the holes you’ll fall down on your qualitative PhD journey.

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 tea and I’ll begin.

This is the introduction to my upcoming ebook, The Hidden Curriculum of Qualitative PhD Research, due for release in August 2026.

If this resonated with you, join the waiting list below and I'll let you know as soon as it's available.