Education

Joint doctoral studies with the Lithuanian Sports University and Vilnius University. Coordinating institution: Lithuanian Sports University.

Educational research provided by the team is based on the contemporary approach to education and learning, as well as on the using the best Lithuanian and world-wide pedagogical traditions. The team understands well that the boundaries of the discipline of Education have already broadened. The educational researchers focus not only on young generation’s and adults‘ formal, informal, non-formal education and learning, social education and education management, issues related to higher education but also on modern educational technologies, educational and learning environments and other issues related to educational innovations. Research is also carried out in the fields of employees‘ organizational learning in knowledge organizations, learning communities, development of learning cities and regions in terms of educational and learning challenges they face.

Topic title	Possible scientific supervisors	Source of funding
Teacher activity in contemporary educational ecosystems: innovative competence profiles	prof. dr. Brigita Janiūnaitė	state-funded	Research Topic Summary. Contemporary society is experiencing intense and diverse technological, political, social and cultural changes, especially related to the qualities of Society 4.0. Current education policy discussions, both nationally and internationally, often seek innovations that could help education systems adapt to a changing world, considering the growing needs of the labour market; to new social, ecological and economic challenges; to the changing norms and practices of children and youth. As stated in the Lithuanian Innovation Ecosystem Review (2019), ensuring innovation-based growth requires the dissemination of an innovation culture, as well as the development of entrepreneurship and creativity, critical thinking, and skills and knowledge that meet market needs and demands. Thus, the role of educational institutions, and at the same time educators, in the innovation ecosystem is particularly important. This dissertation project focuses not so much on how a teacher develops the previously mentioned qualities, but on the innovativeness of the teacher himself, the configurations of his expression in general and at different stages of the innovative process, as well as the factors that encourage and inhibit the expression of innovativeness of the teacher. The theory of individual innovativeness as a “framework” for analysing teachers’ attitudes towards technologies is revealed by Martins (2018); the information literacy of a preschool teacher through the prism of knowledge about networks is revealed by assessing this aspect through individual innovativeness in the publication of Gokcearslan, Karademir, Korucu (2017); the relationship between a teacher’s individual innovativeness and self-efficacy is also analysed (Coklar, Ozbek, 2017). Another keyword is profiles. In scientific literature, teacher profiles are revealed, for example, by modelling teacher “burnout” profiles (Pyhalto et al., 2020); teacher profiles are revealed based on teaching and mentoring experience (Albuquerque, Sa, Aranha, Resende,2014). Teacher profiles are also revealed as the results of European projects, e.g., the profile of an inclusive teacher; the professional profile of a teacher; a certain modelling of teacher profiles was also carried out in the OECD (Lithuania participated in both studies). In this way, the project aims to answer the question: what innovative profiles are characteristic of a contemporary general education school teacher; what factors - personal, organizational, etc. - enable and/or hinder the expression of a teacher's innovativeness; what are the connections of these factors with the emerging innovative profiles? The search for answers to these questions constitutes the problematic of the dissertation project. When evaluating the works of both Lithuanian and foreign researchers from a methodological aspect, in most cases quantitative research, conducted based on surveys or experiments, dominates. The mixed research approach, which is planned to be used in this project, can be identified as a potential direction for the development of this type of research methodology. To achieve the research goal, already validated and originally developed and validated research instruments.