Abstract:
The classification of Albania as a flawed democracy with fragile civil liberties, political rights, and the insufficiency of internal democratization mechanisms revealed the need for an internal and bottom-up process of democratization. Education, considered an internal factor, affects the quality of citizenry, political culture and values in a sustainable manner. Albania inherits a communist past when indoctrination and centralization in education were common. In such a context, this study aims to explore Albanian Matura students’ perceptions and experiences of freedom and distributive justice as two key values of democracy, in the school environment. A questionnaire, used as an instrument, was completed by a sample of 1846 Matura students of the 2020-2021 academic year. Quantitative methods and descriptive and inferential analysis were used to answer the research questions and to test the hypothesis. The findings in this study, based on respondents’ self-reporting answers, revealed that experiences and perceptions of freedom differ based on type of school, gender, geographic area (location) and directorate. In addition, all types of freedom under study demonstrated a positive correlation between experience and perception. Regression analysis revealed evidence linking experiences of freedom with perceptions of freedom, the highest being that of freedom of action, in which 8.5 % of variation in perception is explained with experience (B=.297), followed by freedom of choice 6.2 % (B=.232), and freedom of expression 3.5 % (B=.125). Perceptions and experiences of principles of distributive justice differed based on type of school,
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gender, geographical area and directorate. In addition, equality and need are significantly related with a positive correlation between experiences and perceptions. Experiences of equity are negatively correlated with perceptions of equity. Regression analysis demonstrated evidence linking experience with perception; for equality 4.3% of variation in perception is explained by experience (B=.150), for need 4.6 % (B=.120), and inversely for equity it is explained by 1% (B=-.089). The findings expose school sociodemographic characteristics and school experience related to freedom and distributive justice. A proper understanding of freedom and distributive justice from the new generation is significant for the civic (political) culture with education used as an internal democratization factor.
