The Gap Between the Intended Curriculum and Actual Teaching Practices: An Analytical Reading

Abstract

What curriculum designers write on paper and what teachers actually do inside classrooms rarely coincide, and this paper sets out to examine why. Framed as an analytical review of research published between 2016 and 2026, the study draws on frameworks spanning curriculum-levels theory, theories of educational change, and implementation-fidelity, adaptation, and enactment literature to interrogate the persistent divergence between the planned curriculum and enacted teaching practice. Rather than merely cataloguing prior findings, the review interrogates them across Western, Asian, and Arab contexts to trace a common thread. The analysis suggests that this gap is not an incidental glitch fixable through administrative circulars, but the cumulative outcome of structural, professional, and cultural factors converging on the teacher as the real decision-maker inside the classroom, not a passive conduit of content. Professional development disconnected from the realities of implementation, the pressure of standardized examinations, and teachers' lack of ownership over reform initiatives recur across contexts regardless of national wealth. The Libyan and broader Arab context appears to suffer a double gap: one between text and practice, and another in the scholarly documentation of the phenomenon itself. The paper recommends rethinking curriculum development so that it originates from the classroom rather than merely arriving there, and argues for professional learning communities as a realistic bridge between the written page and daily practice.