| Abstract [eng] |
This paper examines the possible causes of educational governance crises in Lithuania, covering crises that occurred in the education system during the period 2016–2025. Although education in Lithuania is given special importance and prioritization, the phenomena that have shaken society and political agendas and tend to recur have not been studied in detail in the academic field. The main goal of the paper is to determine, based on reviews of prevailing ideologies and theories of public governance, as well as using the methods of meaning structuring and interpretive qualitative research, what causes governance crises in the Lithuanian education system: the intersection of ideologies or the quality of actions implemented by institutions. Qualitative interviews with education experts are the main source of data for this work. Using the reviewed theoretical approach and the collected empirical data, an analytical model was developed that allowed the experts' interview responses and insights to be separated into five categories: thoughts involving the intersection of ideologies / thoughts not involving the intersection of ideologies, thoughts involving implementation quality problems / thoughts not involving implementation quality problems, as well as insights that do not fit into the categories. By including the interpretive qualitative research method, the reflections expressed by the informants are delved into, identifying them with possible causalities. The study revealed that educational governance crises can arise both for partly conceptual reasons and for more empirical, policy implementation reasons. Looking at the positions of experts, several paradigms are identified in the Lithuanian education concept. However, it is seen that they do not necessarily lead to an intersection or the need for extremes. Balancing paradigms, forming more unified desired results and moving towards them could reduce the opposition that we experience in the face of educational governance crises. In turn, the specifics of educational policy implementation related to co-creation and planning limitations are also clearly distinguished. Experts emphasize that it is necessary to pay attention to the ineffectiveness of formats, problems of representation of interest groups, as well as the validity and short-termism of planning and actions. In addition, during the analysis of the study, it was possible to distinguish uncategorized insights that provide a different perspective when trying to understand what determines the management crises in Lithuanian education. The results of the study suggest that the prevailing problems could be controlled by avoiding the accumulation of dissatisfaction with quality and focusing on the essence and the defined direction of education. |
