Revealing the Hidden Curriculum of Educational Development: Academic Writing Collaboratives as Counterspaces

This reflection article explores the formation and impact of an academic writing group composed of minoritized educational developers, members of the POD Academic Writing Scholars. In our discussions, we identified a common experience of a hidden curriculum of educational development in which scholarly publishing is an unspoken expectation yet often remains unsupported and unrecognized by our institutions. This hidden curriculum reinforces exclusionary academic norms that disproportionately disadvantage minoritized scholars. We reflect on our writing collaborative as a counterspace, a space for mutual support and solidarity, in which we could explore and resist the hidden curriculum. By examining the barriers we encountered and the insights that emerged from our work together, we describe how writing groups can help educational developers critically examine the norms of our field, build identities as academic writers and community, and affirm diverse forms of academic writing. We share recommendations for how institutions, teaching centers, and educational developers can reveal and challenge the hidden curriculum. Our experiences demonstrate how counterspaces like our not only support individual and collective growth, but can also contribute to broader conversations about systemic inequities in educational development.