Uncovering the hidden curriculum of supervisor's selection in a Faculty of Mathematics: A qualitative study

Hidden curriculum in higher education may be defined as a set of unstated rules which are necessary for completing the formal education successfully. Conducting a dissertation is one of the most important dimensions of postgraduate studies which owns exclusive dynamics and plays a vital part in shaping the hidden curriculum. Considering these exclusive dynamics of research supervision process، I have tried to uncover the hidden norms which influence the postgraduate students of a Mathematics Faculty، when they decide to choose their supervisor. This study is conducted within the qualitative framework، using phenomenology as the method. To collect the needed narrative data، I applied semi-structured interviews، in addition to data extracted from informal talks with the informants. Thus، 9 M. A students from the Faculty of Mathematics were selected using purposeful sampling and the collected data were analyzed and classified by content analysis method. Based on the results، the influential norms can be listed as follow: research supervision style، supervisors'' scientific traits، supervisors'' personality traits، non-academic norms، limitations.