Kosovo became the youngest country in Europe when it declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Kosovo’s participation in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was the first ever in any international large-scale assessment. Thus, with publication of PISA data in December 2016, Kosovo education data are available to address various research questions from a comparative perspective. This study examines PISA 2015 data from the school survey to examine variation in teacher autonomy, measured through a set of questions on assessment practices, in Kosovo in comparison with a representative set of six didaktik - Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland - and six curriculum – Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand –- countries. Considering that the majority of ECER participants represent what is referred to here as didaktik and to some extent curriculum countries, the research questions addressed could be relevant both theoretically and empirically and take into consideration both European and international education dimensions. The study addresses two main research questions: (1) What is the variation in teacher autonomy in Kosovo in comparison with didaktik and curriculum countries in the sample? (2) How are teacher autonomy measures associated with student science performance in Kosovo and in the representative didaktik and curriculum countries? The first objective of the study is to to place Kosovo in the didaktik-curriculum continuum, and in the world education map indeed, since due to lacking data, there is very little, if any, research about Kosovo education context or student achievement studies. A third objective is to apply the didaktik/curriculum framework on addressing educational issues pertaining to the use of varied assessment practices and how they are associated with student performance in comparative achievement studies. This is a new innovative way of exploring education phenomena as the field has been dominated by looking at educational issues primarily from sociological and economic frameworks and theories. Next objective is to test empirically the theoretical claims that are made about differences between didaktik and curriculum, especially when it comes to teacher autonomy. Lastly, the study seeks to extend the dialogue over didaktik and curriculum education traditions and examine how they are becoming more similar or different as a result of global trends in education.

 Didaktik and curriculum are the two most prevalent educational traditions that provide the framework for education systems worldwide, and in the western world in particular (Author et al., 2015). German Didaktik theory is central to curriculum, teaching and learning in Continental Europe generally and German speaking world specifically, as well as in Nordic Europe, but is mostly unknown in the English speaking world (Hopmann, 2007; Westbury et al., 2000). In its original conceptualization, “Didaktik is about how teaching can instigate learning, but learning that as a content-based student activity not as swallowing a sermon or a monologue or otherwise one-sided distribution of knowledge by a teacher” (Hopmann, 2007, p. 113). Curriculum, on the other hand, is a widely used theory amongst many countries, primarily in the English-speaking world. Curriculum here refers to the prevailing curriculum model that has been in place in the U.S. since early 1900s, when the so-called social efficiency model of curriculum won the American education battle against humanistic-based models of curriculum (Kliebard, 2004). Curriculum and didaktik frameworks claim, amongst else, that there is higher level of teacher autonomy among teachers working in didaktik than those in curriculum countries. Kosovo used to apply a downgraded version of didaktik in the past, however, since the end of the war in 1999, international aid and education programmes have pushed Kosovo to adopt national external standardized testing as an accountability measure.

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