Read the Room, Not Just the Rulebook: A Gender-Based Look at How Malaysian Secondary Students Decode School Rules

Author(s)	Dr. Vignes Thurasingam, Dr. Vasan Balan, Dr. Komathy Balasundran
Country	Malaysia
Abstract	School rules function as one of the clearest expressions of the hidden curriculum, shaping student behaviour through values that are rarely stated outright. Yet surprisingly little research has examined how students themselves perceive these rules, and even less has looked at whether that perception varies by gender. To address this gap, data were collected from 80 Year 10 students at a government secondary school in Perak, Malaysia, and an independent samples t-test was used to compare male and female responses. The analysis found only a marginal, statistically non-significant gap between male students (M = 1.6) and female students (M = 2.2), t = 27.4, p = 1.000. In practical terms, this suggests that boys and girls in this setting read school rules in much the same way, and that the hidden curriculum embedded in those rules is being transmitted evenly across genders. The discussion below considers what this pattern means for how school rules function as a hidden curriculum within the Malaysian secondary school context.
Keywords	Hidden curriculum, School rules, Student perceptions, Gender differences, Secondary education
Field	Sociology > Philosophy / Psychology / Religion
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 5, September-October 2026
Published On	2026-09-24
DOI	https://doi.org/10.63363/aijfr.2026.v07i05.7954

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