This poster shall show the methodological approach of my ongoing doctoral dissertation that goes under the working title “CriticalDiscourse Analysis of Educational Policy in Kosovo and related debate”. Kosovo constitutes a very interesting example for present policy making, since in the last two decades it passed through different and opposite phases, going from emergency, to reconstruction and to development, which in some cases still co-exist. Education has in particular been one crucial issue, both before and after the conflict in 1999 (Kostovicova 2009).The study shall focus on the educational discourse(s) emerged and operationalizing in the Country, in respect to the wide and diverse range of stakeholders involved. Data consist of all texts that are considered to be relevant in building up the discourse(s) related to educational policy, be them national and European strategies, policies and reports, both governmental and non-governmental. The main research questions are: what power relations became apparent in educational discourse in Kosovo? What are its main trends and interlocutors? How does the Capabilities Approach’s discourse emerge from it? Theoretically the study draws upon different directions: on one hand from Foucault’s and Fairclough’s works, on the other hand on the Capabilities Approach developed by Sen and Nussbaum. Foucault will form the ground for the study, in his moments of archaeology and genealogy of discourse, as well as for the concepts of power (and freedom-as-power), governance and agency. Within this, the critical realism (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992 but also Fairclough 2005) will draw the scheme of the social reality, which sees the social structure connected to the social events through the mediation of social practice; each level includes a semiotic level, namely the semiotic system (social structure level) the order of discourse (social practice level) text (social events level). The order of discourse, emerging from texts-data and including genres, discourses and styles, is considered to be an open system of structured semiotic differences, some of which are dominant or hegemonic. At the same time, issues of power, agency and hegemonic social and institutional relations are to be considered an important aspect of the Capabilities Approach and shall be tackled also from this perspective. 

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