Darnaus vystymosi švietimo ir Lietuvos švietimo reformos idėjų sąsajos
Correlation between ideas of sustainable development and principles of Lithuanian education reform

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses correlations between basic ideas of education for sustainability, which have been widely cultivated in late XX and early XXI centuries, and those of Lithuanian education reform, which was introduced in 1988. The aim of investigation is to reveal correlations between the ideas of Lithuanian education reform of the first stage and essential concepts of the world’s educational development of XXI century. The author raises a hypothesis that ideas of education for sustainability are not novel to Lithuanian education system. The investigation is conducted using methods of documental and scientific research analysis, as well as comparative analysis. Nowadays Lithuanian education researchers tend to focus on comparison of the ideas of education for sustainability of the world with those conveyed in the documents of Lithuanian education reform of the early XXI century. Those documents contain some clearly expressed parallels with global and European educational concepts. This article, however, concentrates on another period, the period of 1988–1997. That is the time, when the idea of balanced development was already spreading in the world, but the critical role of education for this development was not acknowledged yet. The author has chosen to investigate some essential principles of education for sustainability and Lithuanian education reform, which are hypothetically considered common. These are such principles as transformational function of education, holistic perception of reality, integrity, cultivation of critical and creative thinking as well as developing of virtue oriented attitudes. The analysis of conceptual documents of Lithuanian education reform and evaluation of methodological explanations of its models confirm the hypothesis which is raised in the article. The transformational function was assigned to education in the Conception of Lithuanian education in 1992. In this document education is considered to be the underlying element of society development as well as foundation on which all social reforms ought to be based. According to this document, the objective of education is to surpass society development. Society is transformed by educating a human being, capable of constructive cooperation in the process of society’s transformation. The conditions for educating such a human being are created by developing humanitarian and democratic paradigm of education. The scheme No. 1 depicts relations between the goals, the location and the ways of education. Authors of the reform model have built their conceptual arguments on holistic perception of reality. The phenomena of real world are considered to be complex systems, which obey patterns of regularity. The world is integral unit, parts of which are closely interrelated. The principle of cultural integrity of a person is emphasized.

• Details
• Contents