Subject to global pressures since the fall of communism in December 1990, efforts to modernise and improve Albania’s education system through policy initiatives have produced little, if any, change (Maghnouj et al., 2020; UNESCO, 2017). Attempts to address the conspicuous gap between policy and practice have focused on reforming initial teacher education (ITE) (European Commission, 2015; European Union, 2007, Mita et al. 2023) but the effects are yet to filter through to in-school classroom practice. Extant studies demonstrate that, Albanian pre-certified teachers (who have completed a two-year Professional Master of Teaching program) fail to demonstrate government-mandated learner-centred practices during their three-month internships. Instead, they tend to replicate what they experienced in their own schooling and much of their teacher training; namely, direct textbook instruction (Zaçellari, 2019). What is clear, after decades of Albanian educational reform, is that applying policy without adequate support and training hampers teachers’ capacities to develop and flourish in the classroom.

If improvements to quality are to be addressed and achieved, quality needs to be understood and operationalised. Taking such reform to scale requires a solid conceptualisation of what constitutes quality teaching, without which teachers will not have the capacity to understand when they have indeed achieved it (City et al., 2009). This is where the Quality Teaching (QT) Model, developed in Australia, has potential value (State of NSW, Department of Education, 2020). As a longstanding framework on quality teaching, backed by rigorous research showing positive effects on teachers and students when used as an instrument for coding lessons, the QT Model provides a solid foundation for building quality practice in Albania, based on clear concepts and a common language with which to talk about quality teaching.

This poster outlines a first of its kind analysis of Albanian teacher education carried out as part of a larger PhD project whereby Albanian pre-service teachers were introduced to the QT Model and coding process in an attempt to build their capacity for quality teaching.

Taking an existing model from one educational context and simply implementing it in a vastly different setting is not recommended. Indeed, doing so with little regard to context is unwise and potentially damaging. Therefore, as a first step in determining the potential suitability and likely benefit of utilising the QT Model in future Albanian teacher education, I investigated the alignment between the Albanian ITE curriculum of three universities and the QT Model. My contention was that demonstrated alignment would increase the Albanian Ministry of Education’s confidence in the value of the Model for improving quality teaching and would identify where the greatest improvements to teaching might be anticipated as newly trained teachers engage with the Model.

To investigate how Albanian ITE potentially relates to the QT Model, the following two research questions were employed in undertaking a curriculum analysis:

1.                Which QT elements, if any, are evident within the written curricula for the pedagogical subjects taught at three Albanian ITE institutions?

2.                How does the enacted ITE curriculum align with the written curriculum and with the QT Model?

Pedagogically focused subject syllabi were requested from three Albanian ITE institutions offering the Professional Master of Teaching program. The institutions supplied 31 syllabi, of which 23 were relevant to this analysis. Alongside analysis of the written curriculum, and informed by Dewey’s transactional realism (Biesta, 2010; Biesta & Burbules, 2003), the experiences of 26 preservice teachers (20 pre-licensed teacher-interns and 6 master of teaching students) were also investigated to address how the curriculum was enacted. The QT Model’s 18 elements were used as a deductive framework to guide analysis of the written curriculum. ‘Alignment’ was considered to occur when it was evident that there was clear potential for the QT Model’s elements to be covered to varying degrees by the subject syllabuses. When analysing the interview transcripts, the Model was again used deductively to identify alignment between the Model’s 18 elements and the participants’ experiences of the enacted curriculum. Identified alignments were then also analysed in relation to the written curriculum map to identify patterns and parallels. As part of the larger study, participants were introduced to the QT Model during a one-day professional development workshop (for teacher-interns), or a university-based, two-and-a-half-hour workshop (for master’s students). Post workshops, participants were asked if they could identify any elements that may have been addressed or clearly absent in their master’s training, as a means of corroborating findings from analysis of the written and enacted curricula – the results of which were analysed against the two curriculum maps. Additionally, to address the potential tension between what is taught and what is intended, participants were asked to comment on how adequately their institution’s programs had prepared them for classroom practice and any future learning needs they required. These transcripts were inductively coded using a transactional realist lens to also identify potential influences of the hidden curricula.

While similarities were identified between the ITE curricula and the QT Model, the analysis demonstrates uneven inclusion of the QT elements across both the written and enacted curricula. These results suggest that ITE students are likely to have gained some exposure to some QT elements during their teacher training and that more systematically introducing the QT Model would not be at odds with the Albanian government’s mandate on modernising teaching practices. However, in the interviews, while participants mentioned the concept of “learner-centred teaching”, they contrasted these ostensibly modern practices with their own experiences of traditional classrooms. Moreover, they could not adequately explain what quality might look like in a modern, learner-centred classroom, likely due to repeated exposure to direct textbook instruction during their training which they revealed as they voiced frustration at lecturers’ attempts to broach new methods with old tricks. This study demonstrates that Albanian ITE is some distance from having a clearly articulated, solid conceptual foundation for what constitutes quality teaching. Yet, with some discernible alignment between existing curricula and the QT Model, albeit inconsistently applied, engagement with the QT Model may, perhaps, not be too foreign a concept for Albanian teacher education. My study demonstrates that while existing ITE curriculum addresses some aspects of quality teaching practice, there is room for strengthening their pedagogical foundations. To do so, all trainee teachers should be provided with a solid conceptualisation of, and the language with which to talk about, what constitutes quality teaching. Furthermore, the incongruency between the intended curriculum and how it is taught must be addressed.

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