The last forty years of education in Kosovo is a story of disruption, resistance and reform. This case study examines how the national education system responded to the challenges of reform and to the turbulent times of COVID-19 in designing and implementing professional development for a complex curricula and instructional transformation (Salihu, Terziqi. & Schaffer,2019).

Kosovo created a nation-wide public school curriculum with the intent to build a high quality educational system that aligned with European curriculums and replace the politicized models of Serbian education and the ad-hoc schools initiated by Kosovo Albanians in response. The urgency of a curriculum change was highlighted in two recent PISA test results which placed Kosovo last among European school systems and third from bottom internationally (OECD, 2018).

The new curriculum approved in 2012, was pilot tested in over 100 schools with implementation beginning nation-wide in 2016. Challenges faced by schools as they undertook implementation included, but were not limited to a lack of textbooks and materials, limited staffing, few models of differentiated instruction, and incomplete professional development at the school level.  

Recognizing the need for continued professional development and targeted resources the Ministry of Education, Mathematics, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) proposed to its cooperating governments and NGOs to develop a series of lessons and related professional development modules to teach a specific element of the curriculum that could be expanded to other content areas. Some of these lessons were developed under the auspices of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations and the Council of Europe (COE).   The United States Embassy supported a short-term specialist position to work with the curriculum specialists at MESTI and local school personnel to develop professional education modules and undertake professional development sessions.

The MESTI personnel proposed the specialist work on a specific area where the teachers have insufficient resources, limited experience, and few models of practice within Kosovo’s educational community.  The proposal was entitled “Cross-Cutting Issues in the Kosovo Pre-University Curriculum” and intended to impact the elementary and secondary schools across the country. In the proposal, the Division of Curriculum and Textbook staff at MIST addressed five areas of the curriculum that were not directly covered in the traditional curriculum, but were considered essential to building a competent citizenry.   These five areas included globalization and interdependence, education for democratic citizenship, education for peace, media education and education for sustainable development. These areas were considered interdisciplinary and addressed issues of pollution, marginalized populations and quality of life, but did not have an academic home in the schools.    

The professional development model implemented is a multilevel, reiterative model based on concepts from the literature on professional development (Gümüş E. & Mehmet B., 2021: Whitcomb, Borko & Liston, 2009) and support professional development programs situated in practice, focused on student learning, embedded in professional communities, sustainable and scalable, and both supported and accompanied by carefully designed research. In addition, the model anticipated shift in curriculum based on political decisions and the impact of educational technology.  For this Professional Development effort, MESTI staff and teachers representing relevant grade level and content areas who were recognized for their professionalism and leadership formed a design group which received training in cross-cutting curriculum issues with specific focus on integrated teaching models. The group co-designed lessons, presented lessons to classes, reviewed teacher and student learning, and revised lessons for distribution.  In schools, the team presented the revised lesson in classes and with feedback from teachers worked with the classroom teachers to enhance the lessons and adapt lesson to their individual content and settings.  

Participant observation was considered to be the most effective, comprehensive and revealing strategy for assessment of an interdisciplinary, cross-content professional development model. Given the complex and multilayer nature of this school reform, a qualitative model using open and overt procedures would permit all participants to understand the purpose of the research and communicate freely with the researchers who were engaged in the same activities. Participants were aware that the process was to improve the instruction and curriculum. Researchers kept notes of interactions, decisions and perceptions of the development of lessons. Products of the development, student outcomes of teaching as well as revisions in curriculum. instruction and professional development sessions became supportive data. On-going comparisons among researchers was part of the revision process. The Participant Observation Method presuppose the researchers meet three criteria. First, the researchers must gain entry to the location of study. In this case, the researchers are long-timer members of the education community with close ties to the school system. They have been students, teachers and now officials in MESTI with responsibility for curriculum and textbooks. The participants include teachers from the local schools who are engaged with their colleagues at MESTI and the selected schools for the pilot implementation are well known and representative of the larger community. The second criteria is the establishment of rapport with the research participants under investigation. The three researchers each have over 20 years of collaboration with schools and teachers in the community. For the third criteria, the researchers have the time to commit to the research participants to get a sufficient amount of data for the study. The development of the curriculum is central to the role of the Division of Curriculum and Textbooks therefore their commitment was assured. The team compared intended outcomes with realized performance at points in the process. The first examined the selection of the team and their expertise, the second examined the selection of professional development strategies that focused on teacher dispositions and instructional behaviors, next the lessons were assessed for cross-curriculum orientation, then instructional practices and changes in lesson based on pilot instruction were reviewed and finally an assessment of changes based on school context and enhanced teacher expertise was completed. Researchers’ notes were compared during each component of development and summaries and recommendations were used as guides in the next development phase. These findings formed the basis for conclusions.

Preliminary analysis suggest a number of factors influence Kosovo’s ability to design and implement cross content and interdisciplinary curriculum in Kosovo’s classrooms. The teacher corps in Kosovo faced challenges that include their own education experiences under the previous Yugoslavian educational system (pre-1995) and/or the alternative system organized by the Kosovo Albanians during the years of resistance (1992-1999). Their education was then followed by a system developed first under the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) authority (2002-2008) and most recently by the Ministry of Education. These educational experiences were often disjointed and sometimes oppressive. The limited background, experience and few instructional models has limited teachers’ capacity to develop and teach lessons that move from teacher center instruction to student centered instruction or to integrative content lessons. Instruction that is closer to current instructional models tended to be more effectively implemented and easier for the teachers to develop and use. Lessons that are significantly different in current teacher behaviors or student behaviors or outcomes are less likely to be fully implemented. Modeling instruction and sample lessons are important developments in these more divergent lessons. The preliminary findings also indicate that resources, known to vary greatly across schools, remains a challenge for many schools and teachers. The adoption of curriculum that is significantly different demands textbooks and resources that adapt to the instruction. This remains a challenge. The shifting models of education and the current governmental emphasis on aligning the educational system with European Educational values and standards places strain on the system. Pushed by its weak performance on PISA and a desire to be competitive within Europe, the government adoption of European oriented curriculum (MEST, 2012) requires curriculum and professional development programs to assist schools to adjust to these programs. These changes have been initiated, but widespread adoption will take time.

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