STEM EDUCATION IN ALBANIAN CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS: TEACHERS’ CONCEPTUALISATIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Teachers’ understandings of STEM shape how they interpret its purposes and possibilities for classroom practice. In this qualitative, interpretive case study I explore how 45 practising teachers from private Catholic primary schools across Albania conceptualise STEM and describe the conditions for its implementation. Data comprised 45 artefacts, including drawings, diagrams and text, and 24 written responses, collected before training at a professional-formation event in June 2025 and representations alongside accounts of current practice and implementation conditions were examined using reflexive thematic analysis informed by visual social semiotics. This study finds that teachers predominantly represented STEM as integrated, learner-centred and developmental, emphasising projects, practical activity, collaboration, creativity and citizenship while engineering design, mathematical evidence, testing and assessment were less visible while written reflections revealed uneven reported implementation, ranging from initial awareness to established integrated practices. Teachers endorsed flexibility and gradual adoption, while identifying professional learning, curriculum alignment, leadership, collaboration, resources and parental relationships as important implementation conditions. The findings distinguish an aspirational visual grammar of STEM from an operational discourse of cautious, conditional optimism. The findings also suggest that relevant pedagogical expertise can precede explicit STEM conceptualisation. Professional development should therefore build on teachers’ existing practices while strengthening disciplinary purpose, engineering design, evidence-based reasoning and assessment, supported by curricular and institutional arrangements.