Vignette 4. Expressions of global citizenship in student protests in Albania (2018-2019). Fieldnotes and reflections

This vignette examines the idea of global civic engagement among student activists in Albania, contextualizing their protests within the current landscape of wider global and domestic protests. The concept of global civic engagement does what global citizenship and global competence have often failed to do, uniting individuals from distinctly different points of view via solidarity, a sense of shared identity and belonging, and a sense of agency in bringing about social and political change. The author considers the extent to which this approach to global civic engagement can help address some of the limitations of dominant models of global citizenship and global competence used today. (DIPF/Orig.

From Global Projects To Classroom Practice: The Localization Of Democratic Citizenship Education In Post-Communist Albania

This dissertation examines the role of key educational actors in Albanian educational reform and democratization following the fall of the communist dictatorship. In the post-communist period, Albanian policy makers increasingly adopted models of education for a democratic, marketbased, global knowledge society. Yet despite a seeming convergence of national and international educational aims, such interventions resulted in a wide variation of results on the ground. My dissertation analyzes these gaps between policy and practice. For a total of 32 months during 2003-2009, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Albania, one of the poorest countries of Europe. In a vertical case study, I investigated the changing roles and identities, sources of knowledge, and professional practice of international experts, national education leaders, and teachers as they developed and implemented educational projects for democratic citizenship and the global knowledge economy. I found that although national policy-makers aimed to modernize the Albanian education system by infusing international models into national policies, teachers strategically interpreted and adapted these foreign models to reflect their experience with the political context of schools, their pedagogical and subject knowledge, and their familiar forms of teaching practice. The resulting process of hybrid localization and enactment has significant implications for the outcomes of educational reform in Albania and other democratizing countries. With a more nuanced understanding of the roles, identities, knowledge, and practice of local actors, we can begin to explain why global educational models often fail to be reproduced in particular venues and are instead selectively, strategically, and creatively localized