Decolonizing education in Zimbabwe through a heritage-based curriculum: A reflexive practitioner inquiry

Abstract

The study adopts a reflexive approach, drawing on historical analysis, policy review, and interpretive critique. Reflexivity is central, as the researcher acknowledges positionality as both a product and critic of Zimbabwe’s education system. The study interrogates how inherited education systems continue to influence educational outcomes, access, and identity formation. The paper reflects on my practice as a teacher, community psychologist and researcher engaging with Zimbabwe’s Heritage-Based Curriculum to advance decolonial aims in primary and secondary education. I combine autoethnographic vignettes, document analysis, and iterative classroom inquiry to examine how Heritage-based curriculum policies and syllabi reshape content, pedagogy, and assessment, and where contradictions persist. I argue that the Heritage-based curriculum meaningfully centres local knowledge, languages, and productive skills. The Heritage-Based Curriculum places emphasis on the impartation of problem-solving skills, entrepreneurship and students are viewed as co-creators of knowledge through the utilisation of local resources and cultural context. The Heritage-Based Curriculum fulfills the nation’s aspiration of reconnecting the present education with the past and lost indigenous knowledge.
Nevertheless, sustained decolonization requires deeper shifts in teacher development, language policy, assessment regimes, and resources. It is observed that while the Heritage-Based Curriculum is aimed at redressing inherited flaws in Zimbabwe’s education system, there are some areas that still need to be addressed. Therefore, I conclude the reflections with actionable recommendations for classroom, school, and policy levels aimed at the realisation of a liberatory education curriculum.