Thinking Matters in Lithuania

The aim of the project was to reform Lithuanian primary education, with a specific focus on improving students’ practical problem solving skills and creativity. Thinking Matters (formerly Thinking Schools International) has provided training, expertise and guidance for this major initiative.

Thinking Matters is now working closely with both organisations in order to develop a team of 6 National Trainers and through them to establish Thinking Matters Lithuania.

In March 2018 a group of teachers from four different Lithuanian schools came to visit accredited Thinking Schools in the UK.  The impact of the thinking they saw was ‘attitude changing’.  Read this article about the visits.

Background

In September 2012 representatives from Lithuania visited the UK on a fact-finding mission including visits to various Thinking Schools. It was agreed to identify a small group of pilot schools that might pilot the whole school approach and become the first thinking schools in Lithuania.

In May 2013, TSI Global trainers spent three days in Lithuania working with 75 primary school teachers drawn from a number of different schools across the country. They were introduced to Growing a Thinking School from the Inside Out followed by training in Visual Tools for Thinking. They were tasked with taking the outcomes of the training back into their classrooms.

In August 2013, a further three days training took place for the same group during which they shared classroom practice using the visual tools and also undertook training in Dispositions for Mindfulness with a focus on Habits of Mind.

In December 2013 there was a further return to work with the same group of teachers. This time the main focus was to draw together the threads from the various trainings into the bigger context of the strategies required to become a thinking school. As in Norway, the activity that has been taking place in the Lithuanian schools that were represented during our training attracted considerable facilitating early discussions about how the Thinking Matters whole school approach might be scaled up across the country.

To contact TSI Lithuania email: Giedre Lecickiene (glecickiene@gmail.com) or Kristina Kuznecova (kristina@shibui.lt).