The Interstitial Doctoral Life of #thesisthinkers: When the Hidden Curriculum Might Be All There Is…

Imagine this scenario: a group of doctoral scholars and supervisors in the field of higher education studies decide that the very institutional provision intended to support their research is inadequate to the task at hand. One response is to plough ahead, buckle down, and perhaps grumble our way through making the most of the resources on offer. Our response was to actively collaborate to co-create our own curriculum together, which we call #thesisthinkers. Because #thesisthinkers focuses on doctoral scholars (their identities as researchers, the research projects themselves, and their writing, and acts as a collective and developmental approach to supervision pedagogy, its curriculum is a partnership negotiated each year with those who participate in it as a form of interdependence. Is this a hidden doctoral curriculum? The lack of institutional support certainly leads us to the conclusion that its activities and practices remain under the radar. Yet, on its own merits, #thesisthinkers bears many of the hallmarks of a doctoral experience driven by a considered educational intention. If #thesisthinkers is a form of Hidden Curriculum, we suspect it is hidden in plain sight.