Conference Agenda

In recent years, Kosovo has implemented a number of measures to improve quality assurance mechanisms in Kosovo. Participation in large-scale international comparative assessments is part of a monitoring strategy to compare the educational performance of Kosovo's primary and secondary school students with that of children and young adults in neighboring countries, the region, the European Union and other parts of the world, and as such has served as a key indicator of educational quality (MEST, 2020). International monitoring reports and the few academic studies that have been published reveal substantial differences in educational achievement at both primary and secondary levels in terms of student background and family indicators, place of residence (urban vs. rural areas) and school type (OECD; 2023; Mullis et al., 2017). However, in Kosovo, the rich sources of data obtained through participation in international large-scale assessments remain underutilized for educational research and monitoring, and thus have little to offer for evidence-based policy making in education. To date, inequalities have only been partially documented for achievement, but not for other important outcomes of schooling (Pavesic et al., 2022). Moreover, the causes of inequality have not been systematically investigated.

This symposium aims to bring together different perspectives to provide a more coherent picture of educational equity and quality in Kosovo. It will also broaden the perspective of educational equity, whereas to date, large-scale educational monitoring studies have mainly been used to analyse variations in student performance and equity within and across education systems over time. Other perspectives of educational equity, such as participation and recognition equity, are often neglected. These perspectives do not only take into account achievement levels, variances or minimum competence levels, but also focus on capabilities for social and political participation and on factors such as the quality of social relations, the recognition of individual autonomy and voice, and well-being as an end in itself. On the basis of the four papers, inequality will be examined in terms of a) approaches to teaching, b) the relationship between motivation and achievement, c) explanations of gender differences, and d) comparisons with neighboring countries. The symposium will thus provide a basis for a critical review of the extent to which large-scale studies such as TIMSS and PISA incorporate different foci of educational equity in their concepts, indicators and analytical approaches. The relevance and challenges of including valid and reliable measures of equity concepts in the indicator set of these studies will be illustrated by discussing some secondary analyses of LSA data for Kosovo.

Teacher instructional practices are considered amongst the main determinants of student achievement (Cordero & Gil-Izquierdo, 2018). Moreover, depending on the practices used, teachers can either weaken or promote student achievement (Caro et al., 2016; Hwang et al., 2018). Since student achievement is positively related to teacher practices, the impact of different instructional practices on student achievement represents a topic of great relevance for educational equity (Le Donné et al., 2016). This study explores the prevalence of different instructional practices in classrooms and their association with students’ reading achievements, focusing on the 2018 PISA results in Kosovo. Drawing on a dataset of 3,906 students, the research employs exploratory factor analysis to identify three latent variables representing student-centered instruction: individualized learning instructional practices (ILIP), research-based instructional practices (RBIP), and feedback-oriented institutional practices (FOIP). The study aims to answer two main research questions: (1) Which teacher instructional practices are prevalent among teachers in Kosovo classrooms? (2) How do students of different reading proficiency levels perceive ILIP and FOIP, and is there a significant difference in reading performance among students exposed to different instructional practices? Results indicate that ILIP is the most prevalent instructional practice, followed by FOIP and RBIP. Students predominantly report occasional or minimal exposure to ILIP and FOIP. The study also reveals a negative correlation between ILIP and RBIP with FOIP, suggesting a potential trade-off between student-centered and teacher-oriented practices. Benchmarking analyses demonstrate an equal distribution of students across FOIP and ILIP categories based on reading scores, indicating that exposure alone does not guarantee higher performance. However, RBIP stands out, showing a positive correlation with better reading scores, even at low exposure levels. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse on educational equity by examining the relationship between teaching practices and student outcomes in Kosovo's education system. The findings underscore the importance of considering various instructional practices in the pursuit of equitable education and inform policy discussions around teacher professional development. The study emphasizes the need for continued efforts to align teaching practices with the goals of the education reform implemented in Kosovo, fostering a student-centered approach to enhance reading performance and reduce achievement gaps.

Caro, D. H., Lenkeit, J., & Kyriakides, L. (2016). Teaching strategies and differential effectiveness across learning contexts: Evidence from PISA 2012. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 49, 30–41. Cordero, J. M, Gil-Izquierdo, M. (2018). The effect of teaching strategies on student achievement: An analysis using TALIS-PISA-link. Journal of Policy Modeling 40, 1313–1331. Hwang, J., Choi, K. M., Bae, Y., and Shin, D. H. (2018). Do teachers’ instructional practices moderate equity in mathematical and scientific literacy?: An investigation of the PISA 2012 and 2015. Int J of Sci and Math Educ 16, 25–45. Le Donné, N., Fraser, P., & Bousquet., G. (2016). Teaching strategies for instructional quality: Insights from the TALIS-PISA link data. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 148, OECD Publishing.

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It is not only performance and the skills acquired that are of great importance within school and teaching, but also the students' attitudes towards the respective subjects. Learners' self-concepts, motivation and emotions are fundamental factors in learning, this is also evidenced by the performance of the students (OECD, 2023). In terms of gender, international studies report that girls are better readers than boys, partly due to differences in motivation and contextual effects. In addition, girls tend to have more positive attitudes towards reading and consider themselves to be more literate than boys (Mullis et al., 2017; OECD, 2023). Several studies identified the following characteristics as the cause for the better grade point averages of girls. Girls have higher self-discipline, self-control and self-regulation (Weis et al., 2013) and a higher interest in school in general (Houtte, 2004), they exert themselves more and work more, while disrupting lessons less (Downey & Vogue, 2004) are less avoidant of work, show less problem behaviour and better social behaviour (DiPrete, 2008). Although the additional effort of girls is mentioned here as the cause of the gender differences, the costs borne by girls are hardly taken into account, therefore the focus of this article is the elaboration of gender differences in reading-related self-concept and reading competencies, taking into account the family background of 15-year-old students in Kosovo. For this purpose, data from the PISA 2018 study are analyzed using regression analysis with the IEA IDB Analyzer. Rather than testing factual knowledge, PISA tests students' ability to apply and connect this knowledge. The study is conducted every three years and covers three areas, reading, mathematics and science, with reading being the focus of the assessment in 2018 (OECD, 2023). The results show that although girls perform better in reading and have a higher reading-related self-concept, even taking into account their family background, this is associated with higher costs for these girls, as they also report greater fear of failure.

DiPrete, T. A. & Jennings, J. L. (2012). Social and behavioral skills and the gender gap in early educational achievement. Social Science Research, 41 (1), 1–15. Downey, D. B. & Vogt Yuan, A. S. (2005). Sex differences in school performance during high school: Puzzling patterns and possible explanations. The Sociological Quarterly, 46 (2), 299–321 Houtte, M. v. (2004). Why boys achieve less at school than girls: The difference between boys’ and girls’ academic culture. Educational Studies, 30 (2), 159–173. Mullis, I. V. S., Martin, M. O., Foy, P., Olson, J. F. & Preuschoff, C. (2017). PIRLS 2016 International Results in Reading.: Findings form IEA's trend in international mathematics and science study at the fourth and eighth grades. TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center Lynch School of Education Boston College. https://timss.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/mathreport.html OECD. (2023). Programme for International Student Assessment. OECD. PISA - PISA (oecd.org) Weis, M., Heikamp, T. & Trommsdorff, G. (2013). Gender differences in school achieve[1]ment: The role of self-regulation. Frontiers in Psychology, 4 (442), 1–10

Empirical educational research has shown that social inequalities influence the student´s educational achievement. Different theoretical frameworks, such as Bourdieu's capital theory refer to how different types of capital can be related to achievement. For several countries, the correlation of socio-economic status and student´s educational achievement has been shown (Wendt et al., 2012). About 23% of people in Kosovo live in poverty and the GDP is a quarter of the European average (UNICEF, 2021), which indicates a high level of social inequalities. The fact that post-conflict countries, such as Kosovo, have less beneficial conditions and are therefore also associated with lower levels of educational achievement is e.g. shown by the results of the TIMSS study (Mullis et al., 2020). However, analyses show that social inequality in Kosovo is quite small (Wendt et al., i.p.). Moreover, this raises the question of whether the operationalization of socio-economic status in post-conflict countries can take place in the same way than in other countries and whether constructs developed in one culture are valid for other cultures (Matsumoto, 2003). In this article we therefore analyze the operationalization of the socio-economic status indicators. As a theoretical framework we used Bourdieu´s theory (2003, 2012) of capital. Therefore, we conducted secondary analysis of the TIMSS 2019 data of Kosovo at grade 4 to analyze the extent of differences in mathematics and science performance that can be explained by Bourdieu's theory of capital. We use data from the household survey and the student questionnaire, self-reported by parents and students (nstudents= 4496; mean age 9.9). We conducted multivariate regression analysis using the IEA IDB Analyzer. We found a significant relationship for parental education level and number of books for both math and science The lack of economic resources at home is negatively related to mathematics and science achievement. However, the largest difference in achievement is found among children who come to school hungry, with a difference of 31.5 points in science. The "effect" of language practices on science achievement remains significant when controlling for cultural and economic resources. This can be seen as a first indication that the cultural capital acquired by parents through conflict-related migration makes an independent explanatory contribution to the differences in their children's performance. The overall variability in student performance that this model can explain is limited, explaining only about 13% of the variation in student performance, indicating that other important factors may not be accounted for.

Boudon, R. (1974). Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality. Changing Prospects in Western Society. Wiley. Bourdieu, P. (2003). Interventionen, 1961-2001: Sozialwissenschaft und politisches Handeln. Raisons d'agir. VSA-Verlag. Bourdieu, P. (2012). Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital. In U. Bauer, U. H. Bittlingmayer, & A. Scherr (Eds.), Handbuch Bildungs- und Erziehungssoziologie (pp. 229–242). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-18944-4_15 Matsumoto, D. (2003). Cross‐cultural Research. In S. F. Davis (Ed.), Handbook of Research Methods in Experimental Psychology (pp. 189–208). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756973.ch9 UNICEF. (2021). Annual Report. https://www.unicef.org/kosovoprogramme/media/2931/file/English-2022.pdf Wendt, H., Stubbe, T., & Schwippert, K. (2012). Soziale Herkunft und Lesekompetenzen von Schülerinnen und Schülern. In W. Bos, I. Tarelli, A. Bremerich-Vos, & K. Schwippert (Eds.), IGLU 2011Lesekompetenzen von Grundschulkindern in Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich (pp. 175–190). Waxmann Verlag.