Dual roles, dual challenges: a study of teachers’ and students’ experiences across formal and shadow curriculum

Shadow education – or private tutoring – has become a parallel curriculum alongside formal schooling in many education systems. Yet little is known about how teachers and students navigate the curricular tensions arising from participation in both. This study explores the curricular dilemmas faced by public-school teachers and their students who simultaneously engage in formal schooling and shadow education. Drawing on classroom observations and interviews, we identify instructional, classroom management and assessment dilemmas emerging from curricular misalignment. These dilemmas are interrelated and recursive, producing a ripple effect that disrupts pedagogical coherence and undermines the practical efficacy of the school curriculum. Framed through the lens of curriculum enactment, the study highlights the challenges of teaching within dual curricular spaces. It calls for further research into how teachers negotiate curricular authority across systems, and how mismatches in assessment practices shape student perceptions of meaningful learning and institutional credibility.