Armenia

Since Armenia acquired independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, funding for education declined drastically as costs rose. The nation decentralized school and community governance in 1997 and shifted control of spending and appointments to local councils to attempt to address financial needs of families. But annual preprimary tuition for a single student now can cost as much as the annual salary of a teacher. Consequently, many children do not enroll in formal schools until age seven. Unfortunately, the teaching profession suffers too, due to decreases in training opportunities, status, salaries, and overall motivation in the post-Soviet era.

Higher education, however, boasts the highest ranking of the former Soviet states in terms of educational attainment. The finest of the nation's scholars and researchers belong to the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. Also, adult literacy rates hovered at 100 percent through 1999.

In the midst of this period of inordinate financial strain, Armenia is striving to enact educational innovations to address the shifting sociopolitical realities it faces. Curricula and methods of teaching and learning are being reinvented anew. Many teachers, however, are skeptical of these radical changes and resistant to the reforms that are being thrust upon them. Understandably, they hesitate to simply adopt the succession of changes they have had no role in enacting, at the same time that they are teaching under increasingly difficult circumstances. As a result, there is a notable disconnect between traditional and progressive philosophies of education in Armenia, and educators' voices need to be heard as the nation struggles to resolve the tenuous, interconnected challenges facing the educational and political systems of the nation. Of course, these same teachers need to reflect upon the new and vibrant ways that they can contribute to this process in their individual classrooms—always, of course, with focus on the enrichment of the nation's educational offerings. Ultimately, this will require dialogue on the parts of all stakeholders in the system—teachers, students, parents, policymakers, and administrators—and holds the most promise for establishing a credible and thoughtful program of reform.

To this end, research in adult development has shown that for adults to make any serious life changes (such as those faced by Armenia's teachers), they need first to take ownership of their own personal development. With empathic support and inspired leadership, teachers in Armenia could take charge of recreating their own educational system. At the same time, they could utilize research by Kegan, Lauer, and Torosyan on fostering this development—for themselves as well as their students. One potential approach is to avoid treating issues as separate and disconnected (e.g. "funding," "training," "motivation" in education) and instead identify the way of thinking that brought about the issues or problems in the first place. Thus an overarching problem such as "poor teacher training" can be seen as being "caused" at least partially by individuals needing a better understanding of how to "listen," "cooperate," and "take leadership." Often, once people can see that such skills form a larger pattern, they can better transfer the abilities to manage other problems that come their way. Moreover, with globalization and the new world economy's emphasis on "ideas" and "entrepreneurs as agents of change," the Armenian people may benefit from creating such a "transformative" (rather than merely "informative") system of education more than ever before.

For its long-term future, Armenia could indeed gain from considering its current status within the Chinese definition of "crisis"—as a time of both "danger" and "opportunity." This turning point carries the stark risk that the nation may initially fall into steep decline, but also brings the very real opportunity ultimately to renew intellectual and cultural resources to meet both the mental and material demands of modern life.