Klaipėdos universitetas

Higher education curriculum has been a subject of various disputes in the scholar literature. Official curriculum (such as study programme description, syllabus, study material) and unplanned hidden curriculum that occurs in during the learning process. Official curriculum defines learning goals, tasks, methods and learning outcomes. Meanwhile actual learning process contains not only the official parts of the curriculum, but also knowledge that is created and shared during learning process, especially in collaborative learning environments. That leads to assumption, that collaboration between learners and knowledge sharing is a condition for hidden curriculum to appear. In this article, a problem question is analysed: what elements of collaborative learning enables hidden curriculum in study educational environments? Main goal, using scholar literature analysis, to define the balance between official and hidden curriculum in collaborative learning environments. The article looks into the definitions of official and hidden curriculum and applications in study environments. Certain variations of collaborative learning allow to reach different levels of interaction (and hidden curriculum). The application of collaborative learning in study process has to be well guided and balanced, encouraging students to work in homogenous groups seeking for one well defined purpose.