This issue of the Curriculum Journal pirouettes around a generative tension of in/visibility. This tension is most directly referenced by Wathani and Johan (2025, this volume) in a bibliometric exploration of hidden curriculum. At first glance, invoking the hidden curriculum rightly inspires accusations of academic conspiracism. After all, on what basis is it possible to make meaningful statements about something that is hidden? However, rather than scuttling us down a conspiratorial rabbit hole, the hidden curriculum allows us to notice something significant about mimetically reproduced patterns in student learning outcomes. Refusing a consumerist conceptualisation that views learning outcomes as a static product, Wathani and Johan (2025, this volume) reconceptualization foregrounds curriculum as a dynamic process, entangled within the confluence of publication trends, prolific authors and significant works. In a not dissimilar vein, Aksoy (2025, this volume) deploys a bibliometric methodology to bring into sharp relief the state of research on Curriculum Development in Higher Education (CDHE). The exposure of otherwise obscured patterns enables us to determine the existence of powerful forces shaping higher education curricula, forces that are discernible even if not always immediately and obviously perceptible. We have entered the realms of the sound of silence. A realm in which causal mechanisms lurk in a critical realists' layered ontology. Within this jurisdiction, curriculum is located in sanctioned knowledge, stated outcomes and formal syllabi. This is the unambiguously visible superstructure. But beneath this is a dense layering of infrastructure. Here curriculum is ambiguously discernible in the contestation of cultural assumptions, institutional priorities, economic pressures and epistemic hierarchies. These underlying conditions exert decisive—sometimes causal—influence. Yet they remain obscured and difficult to name. But this naming matters. Once named, the hidden curriculum can be interrogated. Visibility allows us to weigh up what might otherwise be accepted without challenge—does curricular alignment between the local and global accomplish what Truong and Nguyen (2025, this volume) assert—equipping students to navigate real-life situations and develop 21st-century challenges through a robust, context-driven mathematics education framework. How do we annotate convergencies and misalignment and their effects? There is a sense in which invisibility is not absence but active presence albeit one that is never fully acknowledged. When curriculum is viewed in terms of in/visibility, the real, the actual and the empirical are reconceptualised as elements of an intricate, interpenetrating system—an ecological whole brought into being through mutuality and interdependence. Ghaith (2025, this volume) ecological curricular model for teaching and learning English as an international language (EIL) is premised on the dynamic interplay of perspectives, practices and products. The authors remind us of the centrality of authenticity, albeit a mutable authenticity shaped by social, academic or professional contexts. When curriculum is understood as part of a complex ecology—a phenomenon that is continually redefined—it leans towards expressing learners' needs while simultaneously endorsing teachers' agency, drawing enthusiastically on pedagogic competencies while remaining grounded in local resources. There is also a courteous acknowledgement of national teacher standards and the politics of assessment, alongside a strategic acceptance of diverse accountability regimes. The in/visible curriculum exceeds its textual boundaries. There are frequent misalignments between what is written, what is valued and what is enacted. Institutions declare curricular commitments—to decolonisation, to inclusion, to transformation—but as Sohdi (2025, this volume) illustrates, those same institutions fail to reach beyond curriculum-as-textually bound. When curriculum is textually bound, it is unable to foster alignment between institutional commitment, professional development or the structural conditions of academic work. When reduced to text, curriculum shrinks structural commitments rendering them as rhetorical gestures. The only action associated with curriculum-as-text is the writing of curriculum documents. Once the curriculum document is written, it is done. When curriculum is examined solely through the dimension of the real—the visible superstructure—significant aspects of its influence remain obscured, inequities persist uninterrupted, policy intent and pedagogic practice remain misaligned and inspiring, galvanising aspirations remain textually bound. Peleki and Nikolaou (2025, this volume) foreground gender inequity as a frequently overlooked area of concern. Adopting a transformative worldview that draws on feminist theory, European citizenship education guidelines and the Greek educational decree on ‘Active Citizenship Actions’, which explicitly requires schools to promote gender equity, Peleki offers a detailed study of secondary schools in Western Greece. They suggest that it is possible to reconnect policy intent and curriculum practice through improved teacher education, training in inequity awareness and by empowering educators as active designers rather than passive policy conduits. Rudd et al. (2025, this volume) extends this emphasis on teacher empowerment and ecology, noting that rather than being tyrannical, transparency and exposure—making the invisible visible—can be generative of change. While global structural dilemmas, such as the climate crisis, can only be meaningfully addressed at a macro-governmental and policy-level, day-to-day micro-actions remain worth pursuing. Teaching and learning about where and how a T-shirt is made (‘The Lifecycle of My Clothes’, a unit of work developed by academics and practitioners) and its environmental impact increased awareness, knowledge and confidence among both teachers and pupils. Such exposure has the capacity to mitigate climate change while also reducing anxiety. This is small, minute, microscopic change—the climate crisis addressed one T-shirt at a time—but the creative tension between curriculum as in/visibilities is nonetheless evident. Glover et al. (2026, this volume) offer the elusive butterfly as a metaphor for curriculum realisation. The writers thus invite us to notice small, barely perceptible, hidden, inconsequential (day-to-day, one t-shirt at a time) events that may have seismic, unanticipated, unpredictable consequences. So mismatched is the butterfly wing and the hurricane that we have trouble conceptualising the two events as related. There is no literal, empirical cause equals effect correlation. Curriculum reform provides a vital opportunity—how teachers respond, fuelled by passion, commitment and confidence filtered by a learning orientation (one premised on inquiry for sustained learning) or a social orientation (one premised on collaboration and interaction) to make a decisive and determining difference. Can the butterfly wing of enthusiastic determination shift the boulder of curriculum stasis or environmental decline? A huge speculative leap is required for this correlation. A leap similar to what is required to link mycology O'Shea et al. (2026, this volume) to the anti-racist inclinations that continue to animate the editorial team of the Curriculum Journal. The leap is as speculative as it is significant. Fungi have for some time been misclassified. There is a hidden curriculum here. In the flawed misbelief that fungi are plants, is the hidden belief that taxonomical classification has a basis in fact. It is accepted as fact that the difference between a plant and a person is located in the capacity to feel. I confess to a particular fondness for this paper. Mushrooms are fascinating. The paper took an inordinate amount of time to attract peer reviewers. I would like to thank the authors for staying with us. The organic status of mushrooms might not shift curriculum development nor upturn policy directions across the globe (though let's hold the optimism of the butterfly wing in view)—but let's also remember that facts do not belong exclusively to Mr. Gradgrind, the notorious school board Superintendent in Charles Dickens's 1854 novel Hard Times dedicated profitable enterprise, hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers. (Gradgrind—Wikipedia, 2025) If this issue of the Curriculum Journal were a jazz ensemble, O'Shea et al. (2026, this volume) posture as Archie Shepp—the iconoclast whose saxophone refuses polite lyricism. He breaches the smooth harmonies of his contemporaries with a raw, insurgent rhythm, forging a sound all his own—restless in its echoes, disruptive in its cadence—at once unsettling, redefining and impossible to ignore. O'Shea et al. (2026 this volume) examine the representation of mycology in children's literature; they annotate 180 non-fiction science books, 97% of which contained inaccurate or missing information. Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy who misclassified fungi as plants, also classified humans into varieties—species and subspecies—based on geography, melanin and prejudiced behavioural traits (Linnaeus and Race | The Linnean Society, n.d.). It is stunning how much the world changes when what is hidden is exposed. Is it possible that a critical, sceptical, questioning of what is accepted as true—leading to a refusal of the belief that entities can be taxonomically classified according to fixed criteria—could be the butterfly wing of seismic change? The tension here is restricted to in/visibility. I resolutely refuse the conflation between the dark and the undesirable. Fungi, like dreams and the imagination, grow in the dark or at least thrive underground. Mushroom methodology (Mapping the Literature, Understanding the Connections and Communities of Knowledge, Seeking Clarity, Honouring Indigenous Ways of Wisdom, Refresh and Re-invigorate, Observe, Orchestrate and Order, Occupy the Orbit, Making Visible (the) Knowledge, Sporing (the) Knowledge (Phelan, 2025) leans directly into anti-colonial and justice-oriented conceptualisation, theoretical framing and empirical analysis of curriculum). Hence, the speculative leap. Fathurrochman et al. (2025, this volume) make no explicit reference to mushroom methodology but is inspired by its indigeneity. It is understandable that in these times of galloping global authoritarianism, the unrelenting onslaught of neoliberalism and its associated poly-crises that decolonial indigenisation may be viewed as an indulgence. Survival implies we put on our protective armour and disappear into obscure silence. Survivance implies otherwise. This paper makes a less speculative leap by empirically connecting what for many was always an intuitive connection between decolonisation (through the integration of indigenous epistemologies into elementary education) and among other things, academic achievement and student engagement in and beyond Indonesia. Making the usually invisible indigenous epistemologies—visible through integration lead to a valuable contribution to culture-responsive curriculum in Global South contexts. Indigenisation connects seamlessly to voice. Rumiantsev et al. (2026, this volume) demonstrate that both voice and indigenisation betray a democratic principle that is fully entangled within notions of collaboration—even if the specific voices are distinct. Rumiantsev et al. (2026, this volume) make explicit the hidden requirements of co-creation: practitioner ownership, iterative decision-making, shared conceptual language, balancing tradition with innovation and collaborative reflection. Each paper in this volume has an extensive reach, colouring outside the specific geopolitical, cognate or disciplinary boundaries. Rumiantsev et al. (2026, this volume) located in the Dutch conservatoire, invite us to consider the confluence between curriculum, teacher agency and institutional learning as enablers of long-term sustainable educational change. As an abstract idea, indigenisation is welcome. But there is a necessary hesitation—does the notion of indigeneity and curricular diversity have its limits. If so, an undergraduate degree in Science (B.Sc.) in Medical Imaging is the outer boundary. The idea of epistemic flexibility in the monolith of true scientific facts provokes anxiety. If ever there was a moment when Mr. Gradgrind's facts should be allowed to stand unassailed, science and medicine is that arena. Awad and EL-Sonbaty (2026, this volume) paper does not welcome diversity as an inherent good. It instead laments diversity. Not for its butterfly effects in equity but rather an acknowledgement that in a global interconnected order, albeit one subject to the vagaries of US hegemony—lining up curricula with international standards and growing technological requirements is what confers global graduate readiness. How this plays out in a moment of authoritarian crisis—where the hegenomic voice is one that for instance, denies female bodily autonomy or the value of vaccines is a tangent the writers may not have been positioned to consider. This moment of flagrant epistemic disregard has conceptualised ‘alternative facts’. Awad and EL-Sonbaty (2026, this volume) advocate for neither indigenisation nor alternative facts. Instead, the paper demonstrates the desirability of medical degrees, which offer a balanced curriculum combining core competencies, clinical training, alongside elective flexibility. This is argued as essential for building adaptable and trained medical imaging technologists. Part of the flexibility Awad and EL-Sonbaty (2026, this volume) might have but did not include is the integration of student voice. Is there any perspective, discipline or pedagogic preference from which education at any level is about anything other than developing the social and individual resources that help people to thrive—which, in the exploration offered by Rebholz (2026, this volume) means to manage stress? Is it possible to name the invisible set of beliefs that enable a view of student voice as optional? What hidden beliefs enable them to be viewed as anything other than a necessary (and therefore mandated) curricular inclusion? The overall stance here is the value of exploring, naming and annotating the invisible. Here the argument is clear; this is not an indulgence driven by personal preference but directly related to overall health and resilience—salutogenesis. The issue stands as an open invitation. The retreat into what is immediate and seen is comforting. But our refusal to pay attention to the in/visible does not protect us from its pervasive influence over curriculum and every other aspect of our educative lives. The in/visible curriculum is not a marginal concern but the thicket through which our curriculum lives, breathes and takes effect. Like fungi that flourish in the dark, or the butterfly whose fragile movement unsettles vast systems, curricular transformation may begin in the smallest acts of noticing, questioning and re-imagining. In the sound of silence, dreaming and imagination, we find the possibilities for just, life-affirming and decolonised educational futures. The author did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
Carol Azumah Dennis (Mon,) studied this question.