Students' Attitudes Towards Vocational Education in Albania and the Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed serious challenges to the Albanian education system, schools, universities, colleges, childcare, which all had to shut down to stop the spread of the virus. This led to adaptation and an instant introduction of online education while students, teachers and other stakeholders were not prepared for it. The Albanian Vocational Education and Training (VET) schools and institutions were the most affected by the difficulties of the system to adapt to online learning, because the VET students are more in need of practical knowledge and skills development. This article is intended to acquire knowledge about the basic concepts and theories of attitude: nature, definition, and importance, to explore the dimensionality of Albanian students' attitudes towards vocational education through literature review, qualitative research and social media research and the COVID-19 pandemic challenges. Research of theories to understand this concept and definitions of various scholars related to them in this article suggest some recommendations on how to improve the poor image and low reputation that vocational education has suffered in Albania. VET is not always preferred within the Albanian society and is often considered a second opportunity for low success-rate faculty students.