Interview: Regina Sabalauskiene Talks about Step by Step and Education in Lithuania

ISSA is pleased to introduce a new newsletter feature - an interview with the Executive Director of an ISSA national member organization. Our first interview is with Regina Sabaliauskiene, Executive Director of the Center for Innovative Education in Lithuania. Regina is an extremely active member of ISSA's network. She is a Quality Expert (formerly called Regional Anchor) for ISSA's Quality Early Education Program and is widely involved in partnership projects with other regional ISSA members. As a member of ISSA's Quality Early Education Program Committee she is actively involved in strategic planning. Regina is also serving as Conference Chair for ISSA's upcoming 9th Annual Conference, Active Citizenship: Democratic Practices in Education, which will take place in Budapest, 9-12 October 2008. Regina talked with us about her organization, its work, and education in Lithuania.

The Center for Innovative Education Team (from left to right): Regina Sabaliauskiene, Aista Kuraite-Volbekiene, Jolanta Baniuliene, Regina Rimkiene

ISSA: How many people work in your organization, and what do they do?

RS: Only four people work in our organization. Regina Rimkiene and I handle content issues. We develop new training modules, conduct trainings, write articles, participate in different working groups organized by the Ministry of Education, etc. Aista, our manager, organizes events, arranges travel, takes care of our office, etc. Jolanta, our accountant, is responsible for all financial transactions, reporting, etc. But we in Vilnius are just the tip of the iceberg. We have 9 training centers throughout the country, with 32 experienced contract trainers, 8 certifiers, and 50 mentors.

I'd like to share that in our small organization, all of us are mothers, and we have seven children, ranging in age from 5 to 30 years old, so we have a very personal connection to all levels of Step by Step. When we began implementing SbS in Primary, we started with 10 schools which were situated close to our SbS preschools. My daughter didn't attend a Step by Step school, simply because there were no SbS schools close to my house. One morning, the director of the Open Society Fund-Lithuania said to me: "Regina, be honest. I know that your daughter is a first grader and she is attending a regular non-SbS school. Does this mean the SbS methodology is not good enough?" This conversation "pushed" us to extend the program and we involved 6 more schools (including my daughter's school) in the SbS project that year.

Today my daughter is in 11th grade, but in our office we still have children in SbS preschool and SbS primary. We feel that this has given each of our team members an invaluable extra dimension of understanding of the program. It is very different when you communicate with teachers during trainings or visits to schools as a Step by Step team member, than when you are simply a parent at a parent meeting, or you receive information from your child about the teacher's interactions, classroom activities, classroom community, etc.

ISSA: What does a typical week in your organization look like?

RS: Usually on Monday we discuss our plans for the week and on Friday we evaluate haw successfully we accomplished our plans. But this does not mean that we don't speak during the week. Often something happens and we must change what we planned on Monday or, more often, we must add new objectives to our plans. Speaking about our plans for the week or day, we share duties and discuss if somebody needs help from others. It is a really big advantage that we work as a team and can rely completely on each other. We start each day with a "morning meeting," when all of us have a cup of coffee (or two) and discuss everything that is important for us: new information we received from the Internet, TV, newspapers, etc., new books we have read, etc.

ISSA: What are the main projects your organization is working on right now?

RS: Right now, our two most important projects are:

• Quality Early Education Program (QEEP), both nationally and internationally
• "Development of the competencies of primary teachers and special education teachers to use innovative teaching methods and ICT as a tool for ensuring the success for all children in primary and special education," at the national level.

Since the ISSA Pedagogical Standards were introduced, it has become clear for us that they must become the backbone for each of our projects. It doesn't matter what the title of the project is - all educational programs are about quality.

Since 2007, each preschool in Lithuania has been required to create its own curricula. These have to be designed in accordance with "The Description of Preschool Education Curriculum" and "The Methodical Recommendations for the Designing of Preschool Education Curriculum" (2006). CIE was actively involved in the development of those documents, as well as the trainings for preschool teams. The ISSA Pedagogical Standards were introduced during the trainings. All SbS preschools now include the Standards in their new curricula as a tool for quality insurance.

Being a Quality Expert, a member of the international QEEP team, is both a huge responsibility and extremely rewarding. This position gives us the possibility to visit different countries, to share knowledge, to learn, and to meet people who care about the quality of education in their countries, who care about children's well-being. We know that in different countries there are different socio-economical, historical conditions, and our idea to have the same high quality of teaching throughout the entire ISSA network demands different amounts of time and dedication from different countries. We know that there are no limits for improvement, which is why ISSA started Standards revision process. But it is even more important that QEEP is switching from putting the emphasis on certification to focusing more on the professional development including mentoring process in countries.

None of us would commend a teacher for comparing children's achievements with each other, and we must remember this rule when speaking about NGOs participating in QEEP. While some NGOs seem "more successful" in QEEP, those NGOs which might seem "less successful" have often made great strides in adding value to their educational systems. Why am I thinking about this? We know that the success factor is very important for all of us - starting with children in preschool and finishing with SbS team members. Those of us who participated in World Forum events were charmed with their mastery of celebrating the smallest successes. We must learn from WF to do this in our network, too. Every success in QEEP is an important success.

ISSA: How has being a member of ISSA affected your NGO and what do you feel your NGO contributes to ISSA?

RS: Being a member of ISSA has created huge growth in our NGO's capacity as experts, both nationally and internationally. We started this process as trainees, then we became trainers in our countries, and now we work as international trainers and experts.

In actually a short period of time, in a systematic, strategic way through materials and trainings, ISSA has helped us build our image as an NGO to be a competent, reliable partner for our government, government agencies that implement policies, and for other NGOs. We can say that we are a case of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. We have been able to reach our full potential. We are seen as experts at the national level and in other countries. We now contribute to ISSA by doing the same for others as was done for us.

ISSA: What challenges do you find your organization facing today?

RS: The biggest challenges are time and financial resources. To maintain the SbS network in the country and to maintain high quality in our preschools and schools is not easy, because it demands a lot of time and energy. We always thought that we were extremely busy when we were operating as part of the Open Society Institute-Lithuania, though we never had to worry about where our program funding would come from. The situation changed in 2000 when we became our own non-profit, the Center for Innovative Education. Since then, we have to think not only about activities, but also where to find the funding for those activities. Now we know what being busy REALLY means.

We pay the price of being known as a hard-working and reliable partner. Time we spend in different working groups, round tables, writing articles for educational magazines, and participating in conferences, is usually not paid. But it is necessary to participate in all those events. It builds our image and provides security for teachers following our ideas.

When we began implementing Step by Step, we knew each teacher and we were capable of visiting each classroom a few times a year. Now, it is completely different. Now during trainings in different parts of Lithuania, we ask teachers who implement the SbS methodology in their classrooms to raise their hands. It is pleasure to see so many hands raised, but it is sad that we don't know those teachers personally.

ISSA: How are these different than the challenges you faced when your organization began working on SbS?

RS: When we started to implement SbS in 1994, the main challenges were:

• To learn the program very quickly and to disseminate SbS very widely;
• To be very diplomatic with national experts who very often told us that we already had very good preschools in Lithuania and there was no need to introduce new "American" methodology which was "written for children in poverty";
• To explain to the director of OSF-Lithuania, that it is better to invest more in a few preschools and not to divide money among all preschools in Lithuania. Our former director often said that SbS preschools were "islands of happiness". He was partially right, but he didn't foresee that those islands would become traction and lighthouses for others, the first components of a big network;
• To find our place in the educational system.

ISSA: Over the past ten years, how has field of ECD changed in your country? Have strengths in the system which existed 10 years ago been maintained? Have weaknesses been improved? In what ways?

RS: Of course, the field of ECD has changed over the past ten years. Our country joined the EU, so the system of education follows common rules and strives to the same goals as all EU countries. We are proud of our educational policy and our flexible and democratic Ministry of Education. Incidentally, Lithuania was the first country in Europe to establish ministry of education (1793).

Over the past ten years, a strong network of NGOs working in education has been established. The Center for Innovative Education is one of the founders of the association "New Connections." The association, founded in 2004, is a voluntary union of NGOs, which was created to serve as a link in interacting with other NGOs, the public and private sectors, with the goal to influence educational and social policies.

New Connections initiated and helped to establish the National Parent's Forum in Lithuania that lobbies and advocates for educational and social needs of children. New Connections collaborates with the Parents' Forum in: creating a parents' information system; empowerment of parent's influence on education; and organizing parent education.

What we have lost over the past ten years are small schools and preschools in rural places. A lot of these have been closed and children travel by bus each day to schools far from their homes. According to statistics, Lithuania has the smallest primary teacher/children ratio in Europe. While we are proud of the statistics, it is unfortunate that our politicians think that small rural schools are not necessary. They can make an economic argument, but considering the well-being of children, it would be better to let those schools exist.

ISSA: At its outset, Step by Step's mission was to build democracy by improving education systems to help nurture children who could think critically, be creative, and make informed decisions. Has your organization's mission changed over the years? If yes, in what ways? If no, is your approach to your mission different than when you began SbS?

RS: The mission of the Center for Innovative Education is to support and affect the change process in education in an effort to promote the values of open society and equal access to a quality education for all children in Lithuania.

Our mission hasn't changed over the years. I think it will remain the same for at least the next ten years. As I mentioned earlier, there are no limits to improvement. The understanding of quality teaching evolves, scientists make new findings, there are new demands of the changing world around us, so there will always be a need to help teachers to reflect on their teaching and to propose new tools for improvement.

During one training for teachers, representative of the Ministry of Education said: "Our (MoE) task is to develop good policy. You will learn how to implement the policy into practice from the Center for Innovative Education." We try to carry out this order (and even more) in the best way we can.