Considerations on the Education of Prospective Scientists: The Learning Contract and the Social Curriculum

The present paper examines aspects of how students are incorporated in the community of mature scientists. Our goal is to illustrate how graduate students learn to distinguish correct procedures from incorrect procedures following two, sometimes contradictory, curricula: the explicit discourse of mathematics and physics on one hand, and a hidden curriculum learned during their enculturation (which we call the social curriculum). The social curriculum naturally addresses matters concerning communication within scientists and the various forms of social recognition. However, emerging from social pressure, quality control of the scientific effort is frequently incorporated into the social curriculum ruling over, and sometimes against, the mastering of meta-cognitive knowledge and scientific rigour in which scientists are supposed to excel. We support our analysis in the observation of the occurrence of wrong mathematics in published scientific works (we offer two simple examples out of countless more than can be found).