Egle Pranckuniene

Eglė Pranckūnienė is transforming education systems in Lithuania by focusing on organizational development, a proactive strategy traditionally employed by the corporate sector. By treating school communities as environments ripe for organizational learning and development, she is mobilizing a variety of participants to work collectively for greater impact.

Eglė Pranckūnienė is transforming education systems in Lithuania by focusing on organizational development, a proactive strategy traditionally employed by the corporate sector. By treating school communities as environments ripe for organizational learning and development, she is mobilizing a variety of participants to work collectively for greater impact.

The Lithuanian school system is undergoing systemic reform. As the median age in Lithuania has increased, a surplus of teachers and school facilities has emerged. There are schools throughout the country without enough students, requiring many schools to close, merge, or otherwise reorganize.
Yet the school reforms have been occurring without the deep engagement of school communities. Historically, schools and educators had very limited autonomy, because education was controlled by the central government. While new legislation and educational policies are providing schools with greater independence–giving them more power to determine curriculum and extracurricular activities, manage their funding, and provide communities with the wider range of different services–many schools are simply waiting for instructions from their municipalities and not capitalizing on the autonomy they have. Although there are thousands of creative and dedicated educators in Lithuania, they continue to feel dependent on the system; they do not see possibilities for finding their own solutions to problems like school closures, leaving options such as opening classes for adults or offering new services untried. Without a voice in the decision-making process, educators and administrators lose the motivation to develop professionally, and parents and students have become skeptical of the need for education reform.

Most education institutions in Lithuania address problems on a micro level. Rather than focusing on changing specific people, grades, or subjects, Eglė is addressing inadequacies in the current education system by working with entire school communities: teachers, administrators, parents, and students. By viewing schools as organizations where everything that goes on affects student learning, she empowers teachers and administrators to see themselves as owners and the managers of their institution, a position that makes them more confident and willing to make decisions that affect the future of the school as a whole. To bring the benefits of this strategy commonly used by business to the education sector, Eglė's Center for School Improvement (CSI) offers a broad range of programs and professional consulting services focused on school-based organizational development.
Since promoting student learning is the primary aim of any school, many of Eglė's programs focus on issues relevant to educating, such as curriculum development, cooperative learning, and building a professional learning community. Working with all teachers of the school and emphasizing universal pedagogical values and concepts relevant to everyone, these programs help teachers break down barriers of isolation, work cooperatively, and address the needs of the students, irrespective of their abilities and social background. As a result, teachers are encouraged to learn from each other, to open their classrooms, to share ideas with their colleagues, and to plan and teach together.
To assist educators and administrators in managing the school, CSI offers similarly tailored programs ranging from school development planning and school self-evaluation to promoting parent and community involvement. As with the work with teachers, these programs consist of one- to three-day training for the school community and an individual consultancy.
Eglė also plans to involve schools in different thematic projects to address school improvement concerns common to many institutions. Held on topics such as "rural schools" and "schools as learning communities," these projects will include teacher trainings and action research at each school that assess the processes of change. Educators can then take the results of this research to education policymakers, allowing them to participate in the drafting of new policies to improve student learning.
Eglė is working with several networks of schools, including about 150 schools in Lithuania, and a group of 20 school consultants associated with CSI. In addition to developing new programs for the professional development of these school consultants, Eglė is cooperating with many NGOs and regional teacher education centers promoting innovative ideas in education in order to spread her idea. Recently five educational NGOs formed a coalition, which aims to advocate for the interests of students and parents to be reflected in new education laws. CSI is also separately working with schools throughout Lithuania and implementing several joint projects with the Ministry of Education.
Looking toward similar reforms being carried out in former Soviet bloc countries, Eglė has trained groups of trainers in all the countries of Central Asia, as well as in Georgia and Mongolia; organizations similar to hers have already been established in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. To expand the network of her partners to other countries, Eglė is also collaborating with the education programs of several international foundations and multilateral organizations.

Soon after graduating from university, Eglė embarked on a scholarly career. However, the declaration of Lithuania's independence soon changed her course. "It was a time when there were no professionals to do certain work, so we all were learning by doing," she recalls. "It was a wonderful time, because people were extremely enthusiastic and dedicated, and everybody wanted to participate in the development of our new independent country." Taking a position with the Ministry of Education and Culture, Eglė joined a group working on the "Concept of the Reform of Education in Lithuania," a document that remains today the main policy document of reform. Realizing that education was her true passion, she continued to work at the Ministry, learning how to manage people, analyze the educational system, and communicate with different groups of stakeholders. Unfortunately, when the former Communists were reelected, the minister leading education reforms had to resign, and the new government announced that it would stop the reforms irrespective of the opinion of the educational community. Eglė decided to leave her government post.
With the aim of sustaining the momentum of the reform movement, Eglė started a five-year-long project in 1993 called "Education for Lithuania's Future." While managing this entire project, Eglé also conducted several other programs on issues like teachers' professional development and school leaders. As a result of the success of these initiatives, Eglė was invited by an international network to serve as a visiting fellow in education in Budapest, where she spent a year and a half coordinating school improvement initiatives. Eglė credits this time as very important for her personal and professional growth because it allowed her the opportunity to work on an international team where she had to organize large international events and provide consultancy services to people in different countries. Upon returning to Lithuania, Eglė decided to focus exclusively on school improvement and spent almost two years preparing for the establishment of CSI.