Studying Hidden Curriculum Beyond Schools: A Method for Tracing Workplace Learning Through Valuation Practices

ABSTRACT Hidden curriculum research has traditionally focused on schools, universities and professional training settings. Yet many contemporary workplaces also function as pedagogic environments in which tacit norms, evaluative standards and forms of accountability are learned through participation rather than explicit instruction. This paper proposes a method for studying such processes by conceptualising valuation practices as a hidden curriculum of professional judgement. Rather than treating financial valuation in medical innovation investment primarily as a technical tool for estimating future returns, the paper reframes it as an evaluative infrastructure through which actors learn what counts as relevant evidence, defensible assumptions and legitimate decision‐making. Methodologically, it develops an artefact‐sensitive and practice‐proximate framework for tracing implicit learning across four dimensions: modelling, commensuration, dispute and justification and stabilisation. The framework is illustrated through de‐identified valuation episodes from medical innovation investment, a setting in which clinical, regulatory, policy and market knowledge must be translated into organisationally recognisable judgements. The paper contributes to education research by extending hidden curriculum analysis beyond formal educational institutions, by offering a transferable method for studying workplace learning in evaluative environments and by reframing valuation infrastructures as sites of educational governance and professional formation.