María Dolores Carlos-Sánchez*, Rosa María Martínez-Ortiz, Jesús Andrés Tavizón-García, Martha Patricia Delijorge-González and Martha Patricia De La Rosa-Basurto
Received: March 08, 2025; Published: March 20, 2025
*Corresponding author: María Dolores Carlos-Sánchez, Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico
DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2025.61.009544
The effectiveness and success of an educational process in a Dental Education Institution (IESO) will depend on several factors, including the teaching capacity to amalgamate the formal and institutional curriculum with the hidden curriculum within its process and work. Under this logic, it is important to highlight the role played by cultural capital as the mortar to unite the knowledge and know-how that is being imparted and acquired. This situation is enhanced and facilitated when the teacher has the quality and a charismatic personality as mediating elements in the attraction, interest and trust in the pedagogical authority, this quality acting as the trigger for an efficient and effective educational process.
Keywords: Amalgamate; Hidden Curriculum; Charisma
Education throughout the world has always been built on certain political, economic, military and even social interests. These interests gradually become ideologies that make education an activity with a defined perspective and prospective, complete, partial or diffuse, where the subtlety or crudeness with which it is instilled determines its success or failure. From this perspective, teachers turn out to be one of the key pieces for its inculcation through their work and daily pedagogical work, an action that gradually stacks the bricks that will configure the personality, mentality and profession of the student in its beginnings and of the professional in its end, these brick structures are joined and fortified with a certain ideology, which serves as mortar to unite and solidify the social fabric, the destiny and the ambitions of the graduate and subsequently transformed into a professional (as long as the system and conditions allow it) (Narváez Aldana L [1]). In this context, the educational institution will essentially present the student with two curricular paths that he will have to follow under the direction of the teacher. One is the one established by the formal institutional curriculum and the other is the hidden curriculum instituted by authorities and teachers of the school, both plagued with objective, subjective, codified, complementary and sometimes contrary aspects. In both cases, a particularity and peculiarity is required that the teacher must possess in order to be successful in the formal or hidden education of his students.
This quality will almost always have more weight than his own wisdom when it comes to being considered consciously or unconsciously by the student as the guide, mentor or tutor to follow in order to achieve what he yearns for: economic, social and/or professional success. In this regard, in the field of Higher Education Institutions and in particular in those in the Field of Dentistry (IESO), a conclusive element for a student to be successful within them is that they achieve an adequate cultural capital through an adequate social integration in the school environment, since this context influences and often determines the frequency and intensity of the exchanges that occur at the time and within the student-student and student-teacher interaction, exchanges that in one way or another contribute to the acquisition of knowledge and social and disciplinary knowledge that will form part of their culture, which will allow them to understand and share codes that little by little will allow them to affiliate, join or register with a specific organization or group within the same IESO.
But what is cultural capital? This term refers to the set of knowledge and know-how that a subject possesses, which are distributed unequally and are not acquired overnight, which is why its acquisition is difficult, but once the student takes ownership of it and internalizes it, making it his own, he is placed in an advantageous position with respect to his peers who lack it (generally they are students of lower grade and time within the same school). For a dentistry student to appropriate the cultural capital necessary to successfully move through IESO and later within the disciplinary field, he can achieve it under three different situations, separated at the beginning, but as time passes they overlap until they can coexist in the same time and place. First, there is the incorporated cultural capital, which is made up of the dispositions, knowledge, ideas, values and skills that students gradually acquire over time. This type of capital is obtained through the socialization generated during their school-academic career. The value of the incorporated state will depend on the spaces, interests and meanings that are incorporated, so its level and type vary from one to another. Part of this type of cultural capital is objectified verbally or in writing and another in a subjective way through interpretations, behaviors, attitudes and gestures. As time goes by, students gradually acquire material goods that objectively reflect the growth of their cultural capital. Books, magazines, equipment, instruments, academic knowledge and any other type of knowledge are the reflection of an objectified cultural capital.
Under this form of capital, its consumption is essential, which will allow them to acquire new knowledge that increases the incorporated cultural capital and their value as a student in the educational and disciplinary field, since its acquisition and possession become important for professional training. The last cultural capital that a student will achieve is institutionalized capital, which is awarded in the form of titles and academic and school degrees that confer recognition and grant different types of homage according to the prestige of the institution that issues them. With it, students prove that they have a certain level of knowledge and knowledge specific to the dental disciplinary field. It must be remembered and recognized that the possession of any or all of the aforementioned forms of cultural capital does not always guarantee the level and volume of professional skills that graduates should have when leaving an IESO (Bourdieu P [2]).
The disciplinary training that is carried out on a daily basis in the IESO is an activity that requires and implies a great commitment and responsibility from the teacher and the student to achieve the purpose and objectives set out in the official curriculum. Those who participate in this process have the commitment to work together and in a complementary way to achieve quality teaching and learning to generate the graduate profile set out in the formal institutional curriculum. Although in the official educational discourse this curriculum is established as the institutional and official master compass that in general terms must guide all educational work through the established purposes and objectives, as well as the educational policies that will determine the programs, plans and actions to be carried out for the development of the study plan, it also It is important to note that consciously or unconsciously when a curricular and teaching plan is made and worked on, it implicitly implies an enormous ideological load that manifests itself in behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, symbols, meanings, languages and other things that are not explicitly written but that the teacher and / or the student decipher little by little as they acquire the codes for this purpose and it is reflected and reproduced in their daily work with the pedagogical work and the student interaction that takes place in the classroom and the school in general through what we know as the hidden curriculum (Bourdieu P, et al. [3]).
But what is the hidden curriculum? This is basically an invisible but established educational process that coexists intertwined and interwoven with the formal curriculum. The formal curriculum functions as a guiding and objective educational guide, written and designed to be easily read and understood by those who possess the necessary codes for it. The second is not written and is subjective, interpretive and holistic. It represents the intersubjective essence of all the people who make up or have made up the educational institution, manifested and applied through the interaction maintained by the main actors (teacher and student) during the educational process. The main purpose of the hidden or invisible curriculum is to help reproduce, link and perpetuate the status quo thanks to a cultural capital made up of knowledge, know-how, attitudes, behaviors, languages, ambitions and desires that cannot be addressed, treated and/or pointed out explicitly, objectively and openly in any official document or through discourse. This hidden curriculum is addressed through intersubjective teacher-teacher, teacher-student, student-student communication and interaction that involves aspects such as the position of the educational institution with respect to the power groups that coexist in the same IESO or society, the alignment with a certain social class, as well as the rejection or approval of a race, ethnicity, gender, culture, religion, etc. (Marcillo CC [4]).
That is to say, through this hidden curriculum, opinions, comments and basic knowledge are imparted in a veiled and indirect way for the acceptance of a dominant social, political and economic system such as capitalism or another, and with it, the convincing acceptance of the asymmetric and inequitable distribution of power, wealth and education itself; this educational process (with certain traits of indoctrination) is transmitted mainly by the teacher who represents the pedagogical authority who, through the pedagogical action carried out during his pedagogical work, in a continuous interaction where a continuous symbolic violence is manifested on his part towards the student and using an intersubjective communication through three types of language, oral, written and visual, he manages to impose at first the cultural arbitrariness that represents the formal curriculum as a concealing and linking element and from which the hidden curriculum is derived and fed, and in a second, moment the prevailing and dominant economic, political, academic, geographic or social ideology in the student’s duty and that the teacher has constructed consciously or unconsciously (Acaso M, et al. [5]).
Under the curricular intention that the IESO must work to promote local, regional and national development, providing greater opportunities for economic, social and professional development and success for the student, these institutions also work for the maintenance of social order using the teacher as the main builder that cements this order; for this, it uses three interwoven spaces; the first consists of concentrating in the teacher certain features of a pre-established reality that reinforces certain dominant interests such as the real need to be able to count on an adequate cultural and economic status to figure in life, a status that must continually increase through cultural capital to keep up with the historical and social times in which one lives and not be left behind or inhibited; for this, the teacher has to carry out his task superficially at times and at other times with a full conviction that he has to adhere to the model of the ideal teacher that is prescribed in the official curriculum, a mold that he himself subsequently builds and enriches.
A second space is where the teacher disguises the reality that he or she lives together with the student, continually pointing out that the status that each person will have in the future is the fault or achievement of oneself due to or thanks to the efforts made during the entire educational process or to the indifference, passivity and disinterest shown during the years spent in school.
The third space implicitly points out that many of the injustices that exist and are suffered in the reality that is lived cannot be denied nor avoided under convincing arguments; At the same time, the discourse of the teacher and/or the student learned through the hidden curriculum, conditions them step by step to accept the working conditions and in the case of the student who graduates, resignedly accepts the difficulties to enter the labor market of the dental field or the lowest position and salary or is placed in underemployment or unemployment, under the justification that this is due to the fact that he was not adequately prepared while he was in school (Lugo Machado JA, et al. [6]) These overlapping spaces, in addition to being instilled in the student by the teacher through the hidden curriculum, are later rewound and reproduced when the same student, over time, comes to work as a teacher and manifests them as part of the fabric that configures, dresses and conditions his actions in the classroom (Bourdieu P, et al. [3]). The functions that these spaces fulfill through the teacher or pedagogical authority have the task of gradually paving the way for the recognition by the entire educational community (and even the family and society in general) of the legality and legitimacy of the formal curriculum established by the educational institution, even though, as Pierre Bourdieu [3] says, this document completely represents a cultural arbitrariness because at no time were the interests, desires, ambitions, needs and culture of the student or his family considered to develop the contents that are in it and specifically in the study plan.
The legality of the curricular document is granted and assumed by all when it receives the consensus and endorsement of the respective institutional authorities and with the power to do so; but the legitimacy begins to be established when the teacher makes it his own and during his daily work expresses through verbal communication his personal experiences, his economic, cultural and social capital. Later, this acceptance passes through the student and his families until it reaches the full society in general. At this first level correspond the simple, complex or even stereotyped presumptuous verbal manifestations that refer to the reality that the teacher and/or the student has built and lives. A second legitimation is manifested in an elementary and colloquial way through proverbs, sayings, legends or comparisons, which in themselves contain a message of true and feasible reality, as for example when he tells his students that if they want to be someone in life they should study and prepare themselves continuously, thereby guaranteeing their economic, social and professional success, or also the use of proverbs such as the following “he who is born to be a flowerpot does not pass the corridor”, another form is the use as examples of certain characters who have been successful in life and who use them as role models so that their students strive in the present by studying, preparing and training to achieve the skills, qualities and characteristics that only school can provide them.
Another level of legitimacy is established through imparted knowledge and know-how which provide a broad frame of reference to teach the behaviors, languages and attitudes that must be assumed as part of a select group, which over time provides the teacher or the student with belonging together with an identity and even a vocation, which are the essential elements of the dental habitus that covers each one of them, understanding this term as a structure from which the person who has identified with a social or professional group reproduces their thoughts and practices in it, which allows them to understand reality from the perceptions of the new group to which they belong (Sacristán Lucas A [7]). Legitimation is also granted with the learning and internalization of the symbolic worlds that cover all the areas and processes in which the IESO operates; For example, belonging as a teacher or student to a prestigious institution not only locally but also regionally and nationally or beyond, gives a different level of satisfaction and presumption compared to belonging to a discredited school. In that sense, the institutional and social reality acquires meaning and sense, at the same time it allows them to orderly place the history and events experienced directly or indirectly that include the past, present and future that was lived, is lived and will be lived.
Following the logic of function and legitimation, students who for some reason do not manage to obtain a degree or title through an official IESO, the hidden curriculum through a justified discourse on biological, medical, psychological or sociological arguments teaches them that they are not qualified for it and that therefore they cannot aspire to a degree or academic title and consequently they will never have a good job and therefore a good salary. The efficiency and effectiveness that almost always has the unconscious or conscious application in the IESO of the hidden curriculum by the teacher to explain totally or partially the failure or the difficulties found by the student, as well as the success, is clearly manifested in turn in how dangerous are the expressions that they make, for example referring to the fact that the students do not listen and pay attention to the recommendations made about the readings that they must do previously, generating an attitude of discouragement, frustration or resistance. It is clear that the student during his first days with that teacher tries to discover what he truly wants and expects, in order to successfully overcome his subject and consequently be able to pass, to do this he learns to contrast and put in the balance of his interests his orders, recommendations, opinions or suggestions and with this differentiate between what the same teacher points out as important and what the colleagues who already have experience with that same teacher also indicate to him.
In case of any incompatibility between both pieces of information, the student has learned that it is more profitable to heed the advice of his classmates with more experience and a higher educational level, since the experiences they have had in this regard with results of success or survival in school lead them to make those decisions (Rodríguez de Castro F [8]). Within this type of education, where the reproduction of the status quo occurs, we find the unconscious acquisition of skills and abilities that are necessary to survive with some degree of success in the educational system and, more decisively, in the future in the field of adult labor relations. For example, the difference between a new student compared to one who has been in the school for some time is that the latter automatically decodes the intentions of his teachers while the former becomes distressed trying to find out what are or will be the demands and conditions of carrying out the work or activity that is being or will be carried out. Likewise, the new student is and feels obliged to learn how to interpret what his teacher says, what are the appropriate, acceptable and correct responses, how and when to participate in class, that is, he works to learn his role, to do so he learns what his rights are, when he can exercise them and how, even knowing at what time and circumstance he has to give them up to avoid further damage to his educational process. This learning takes place within a classroom and is developed following a certain order. From the first days, the group of students works to learn to anticipate the work to be done and the intention of it and gradually learn the order in which the teacher carries out his implicit and explicit activities in his daily work. What is also true is that the rules and routines that are objectively and subjectively manifested in an IESO classroom are generally not stated and explained openly and clearly, nor are they written in a document, much less in the official curriculum. They are only established, assimilated and applied in the continuous social interaction that occurs, leading sooner or later to establish that role of student with the main characterization of subordination and dependence on his teacher in turn, thereby demonstrating the teacher’s pedagogical authority. Among other aspects that are also notable and that are strengthened by the hidden curriculum, although in most students the seed already comes from the family, is the gender code which refers to the forms, contents and processes that define, limit and transmit the set of socially available models with which the student comes into contact in order to reach a personal identification in terms of being a man or a woman; this code over time undergoes modifications and is painted with peculiarities in relation to factors such as social class, gender or ethnicity, in addition to the social, economic and historical contexts in which one lives.
For example, in any IESO as a context of the gender code, women sit in the classroom or meet or gather in the hallways in groups of women and men alike, doing, speaking and communicating things of women or men as the case may be, using in that interaction by gender the feminine or masculine gender code, permeated and contextualized by a denial of women or an exaltation of men (Covacevich C, et al. [9]). This situation of hidden differentiation continually reinforces communication and certain gender-related behaviors, where the bias that is often given by the teacher to the content taught, to the weighting and differentiation of certain competencies and assigned tasks, to the teaching of intellectual habits, etc. is evident. Reproducing through the hidden curriculum the masculine and feminine codes in an unwritten and hidden way represents privileging some students over others, that is, men over women, taking away possibilities and opportunities from them today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow. With this and because of this, school life is partly governed, behavioral patterns linked to social classes are created and reinforced, sexual and racial identification is promoted which, together with other elements, will gradually allow men and women to prepare and relate appropriately to the position and status that they will occupy tomorrow.
Consequently, every educational institution, like the IESO, owes the specific characteristics of its structure and function to the fact that it is necessary to produce and reproduce, by its own means, the institutional conditions whose existence and persistence are necessary for the exercise of its function of arbitrary cultural inculcation, thereby contributing to social order. It is important to point out that it cannot be assumed that everything that the hidden curriculum contains and involves has been intentionally planned, nor that what is described happens, acts and has an equal effect on all the students, on the contrary, it is continually deconstructed and constructed, it is a fact that school practices imposed by the formal and hidden curriculum are not monolithic and immovable, uncritical and passive, on the contrary, they enjoy a certain relative autonomy, a characteristic that makes it feasible for them to be carried out and produce contradictions and situations different from those expected, as manifestations of resistance to the institution, generating changes in daily dynamics.
For this reason, there will always be students who are not aligned and become experts in mocking or distorting the rules established by the institution or by the teacher, for example, during exams or the completion of written work (homework); in the case of exams, they face these exams by resorting to strategies or tricks with cunning such as memorization, the creation of accordions or notes in different forms, codes or keys, printed in different places on the body, clothing or in the classroom, situations that they use to emerge victorious and successfully save the moment because it is the only thing that interests them in this case; in the matter of homework, the culture of cut and paste is used by them as a resistance strategy and often contrary to the indication given by the teacher. Such situations are not new, they have always existed and have been appearing and existing as a response of opposition in the various historical and social moments in which they occur. Therefore, in this, the student is demonstrating the search for his rights of freedom and autonomy, just as the teacher does when imposing situations in the classroom under the auspices of the search for his rights (such as the aforementioned academic freedom), thus giving rise to what is known as a power struggle and for power. In this sense, the formal and hidden curriculum generate the conditions to create and recreate in students a class or group culture, both in the case of the reproduction of obedience and control and in the case of resistance to it.
With this culture, students generate a sense of identity and belonging (as already said), of idiosyncrasy or habitus and with this (as a group) face more successfully the difficulties, challenges and challenges that are presented to them during their training in the IESO (Neut Aguayo P, et al. [10]). For example, seditious students often sit together in a classroom, they share a pre-constructed code that allows them to give meaning and significance to the glances, the laughter and the continuous noises and movements they produce, these students continually change places, drag their chairs and tables, sit with exaggerated manners, pretend to be asleep, continually look out the windows, whisper and boo many of the instructions or suggestions of their classmates and teacher and continually bother and distract their more obedient and diligent classmates, if at a given moment the teacher calls their attention they will always have an excuse ready to save the situation. This situation generates, over the days and weeks, a counterculture to the dominant official culture of order and control. As we have seen, the IESO are a cosmos in themselves, since from the application of the formal and institutional curriculum, written, objective and measurable, they coexist in this institution together with the hidden curriculum; this second curriculum essentially generates two types of students with specific attitudes, behaviors, values, knowledge, know-how and cultures, those who assume themselves as privileged, obedient and submissive and those who feel rejected by the system, disobedient and conflictive.
In general terms, knowledge in the first place of the written document that is an official guide by the teacher and students generates in them what is called a good teacher or a good student and the hidden curriculum is responsible for providing them with the identity, vocation, information and knowledge to successfully carry out and survive day to day, which are the necessary tools for each of them to successfully assume the existing roles within teaching and learning. This situation is nothing other than the conceptual creation in the mental and cognitive structure of each one of how they should be in the sense of behaving, acting, attitude, clothing, language and interaction with their complement (teacher-student, student-teacher) (Finkler M, et al. [11]).
During pedagogical work, which is the moment when the functions and influence of both the formal and hidden curriculum overlap, several objective and subjective dimensions interact that cover the teacher so that the message transmitted is truly assimilated and internalized. Within these dimensions, perhaps more fundamental than erudition, wisdom is the charisma that the teacher can radiate so that it is the magnet that attracts the attention and interest of the student, because if this characteristic does not exist, neither the discourse nor the baggage of knowledge that he intends to share will be attractive and will be irrelevant or without interest to pay attention to it and consequently it will not be decoded, interpreted and internalized. To better understand the above, we will say that charisma is the quality that is considered extraordinary (magically conditioned in its origin, the same if it is a question of prophets, referees, athletes, presidents, teachers or any authority or subject), of a person who, through his personality, has the virtue of being considered in possession of a supernatural or superhuman attraction or at least specifically extraordinary and not possible in any other. The way in which the quality in question should be objectively valued, whether from an ethical, aesthetic or any other point of view, will be a secondary issue in this work, the main thing that is addressed is what concerns the concept, since what matters is how it is valued by the charismatic subjugated people converted by that effect into adepts (García García [12]).
The validity and recognition of the charisma that a teacher radiates when carrying out his teaching function, determines and awakens the confidence and attraction in the student, a belief that is maintained by hypothetical corroboration of the information issued and dogmatized by the charismatic quality of the teacher. The objective or subjective recognition of legitimate charisma is not what establishes legitimacy in itself but the confidence, attraction and interest generated in the other when recognizing that quality; this recognition is psychologically a personal delivery arising from enthusiasm and belief; if the person endowed with charisma does not achieve lasting attraction and above all if his authority or influence does not bring any well-being to those dominated, then there is the probability that his charismatic command will dissipate. Charismatic domination involves a process of communication of an emotional nature. In its genuine form, charismatic domination is of a specifically extraordinary or out-of-the-ordinary nature. It represents a strictly personal social relationship and interaction, united to the charismatic validity provided by corroboration. In the case that this recognition of charisma is fleeting, it is because this domination only existed in statu nascendi (this is the name given to the newly formed first impression or impact that is awakened in a student who has just entered the school or group). In order for this not to happen, the teacher has to know how to dose and essentially vary its character.
To do this, he has to systematize, traditionalize or tropicalize, turning something into a topic, such as naming a common place, that is, using expressions that are usually considered indisputable. This conversion is frequently used and is usually insubstantial or trivial in its content, or both in various aspects. The reasons for this tropicalization can be the following: The ideal or material interest of new entrants to the school or group and the discursive presentation of ever more intense material as time goes by, generates in one way or another interest, seduction and confidence in the charismatic relationship and determines the continuity of this correspondence in such a way that it is cemented on a daily and lasting basis. For this reason, the dailyization of charismatic work must be carried out systematically in the form of an appropriation of the powers of command and of speculative probabilities by the students and under the regulation of their incorporation. This traditionalization or legalization can take different typical forms, the mode of genuine incorporation is based on personal charisma, under this process of routinization the students can only set norms for their incorporation, in particular unwritten norms of education or affiliation. At the end of the day, charisma can only be inherent in the subject and awakened by being tested and liked, it cannot be learned by the subject or infiltrated without interest, attraction and trust on the part of the dominated (Thieme C, et al. [13]).
When the hidden curriculum is presented in an educational process in an IESO, the strength of its influence and impact will depend on certain aspects. On the part of the teacher, in addition to having empirical and scientific knowledge of the profession, he must possess, as something inherent to him, the charismatic quality of generating attraction, interest and confidence. In this way, charisma will really act as the trigger for the teacher to be recognized and treated as an authority and thus be able to work with his students in an efficient and effective way. In an educational process of this type, the hidden curriculum is not necessarily contrary to an institutional formal curriculum, nor is it the trigger for generating conflictive, maladjusted and irresponsible students. This invisible curriculum can be helpful in improving the development and integral education of a student who aspires to be an excellent dentistry professional. The matter will depend on whether the teacher recognizes himself as the companion and tutor in that mission, in addition to having charisma to teach.