The implicit curriculum in an urban university setting: Pathways to students’ empowerment

Professional schools are developing conceptual frameworks that can be used to assess and improve implicit curricula. Students’ professional empowerment, defined to include perceived professional competence and identity, may be considered a vital outcome of these efforts. Our study evaluated measures and tested a path model that included perceptions of characteristics of implicit curricula (i.e., faculty and staff diversity, supportive faculty, opportunity role structure, and access to information) and mediating variables (i.e., participation, sense of community, and feeling valued by the school) as predictors of professional empowerment. Respondents were students (N = 423) of a school of social work in the northeast. Results supported the validity of the scales and fit of the hypothesized model. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.