An African Critical-Pragmatist Approach to Curriculum Decoupling: Structural Constraints on Reflective Practice in Post-Colonial Teacher Education

Globally, reflective practice (RP) is endorsed as foundational to teacher professional development. Yet in many post-colonial, low-resource education systems, RP remains rhetorically mandated but procedurally absent, a classic case of institutional decoupling. This study advances a novel framework, the African Critical-Pragmatist Model (ACPM), to explain and address this policy-practice gap. Synthesizing institutional decoupling theory, educational performativity, and classical RP theories, the ACPM integrates critical diagnosis of post-colonial structural barriers with pragmatic re-engineering strategies. Using Tanzania’s diploma-level teacher education as a strategic case study, we analyze how national assessment weighting matrices systematically disincentivize RP. Findings indicate that even where progressive policies exist, assessment architectures rewarding rote retention produce strategic compliance, not genuine inquiry. The ACPM’s four propositions, Bounded Agency, Structural Interrogation, Anti-Compliance Mandate, and Context-Sensitive Re-engineering, offer transferable pathways for reconceptualizing teacher preparation across comparable low-resource contexts. Reflective practice cannot be requested through policy rhetoric; it must be deliberately engineered through aligned assessment and institutional reform.