The study analyzes the beginning of the Albanian student movement of December 1990 from a historical–sociological and comparative perspective. This historical interpretation of various sources (newspaper articles, activists’ memoirs, interviews, and archival documents) draws its theoretical arguments from social movement studies, student activism, and the sociology of higher education. The study offers a complex explanation of the role of the movement during the country’s democratic transition by also looking at similar cases. Considerations of the broader international and local implications, the role of the university, the academic staff, and the student organization all are accounted for. After tracing the repertoires of strategies and content of the movement to the Albanian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, the study argues that student activism benefitted from the structural opportunities provided by changes introduced in higher education during the historical sequence of late Socialism.
The study analyzes student, school and district level inequalities of Albanian education system as evidenced in two large-scale assessments. Two main datasets were used for this study, PISA 2018 and the Albanian State Matura Exam 2017. Due to the limited availability of data, the study could only consider a small number of dependent variables at the individual, school, and district level. Utilizing a multilevel analysis, the study observes considerable differences among schools and districts in all three PISA domains and the State Matura Exam. The results were inconclusive regarding shortages of resources at the school and district level. Staff shortage was associated with academic performance in the PISA 2018 dataset, but no statistical association could be identified with the lack of school resources. The analysis of the district financial resources did not show any significant relationship between spending and school performance in the Albanian State Matura Exam. Gender disparities were present in both datasets. Socioeconomic factors, which were measured only in the PISA dataset, had an effect on the student' achievement.
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