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Abstract
Since their political reorientation that started in the late 1980s, the Baltic states have experienced profound social reforms to rebuild their democratizing societies. Education has featured as a key vehicle to this transformation process of overcoming the limitations of the Soviet past. National legislative frameworks were therefore soon provided to restructure educational systems and allow for ‘liberal’ approaches to schooling. The process of policy‐making for a new concept of education, however, entailed numerous challenges, and it has resulted in a diverse tapestry of educational provision across the Baltic. With specific focus on minority education, this paper presents a comparative analysis of education policies and practices in contemporary Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in response to emerging language needs in these intensely multiethnic settings.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks go to the British Academy for their support of the Baltic Language and Integration Network (BLaIN: http://www.blain‐online.org), from which this paper has developed. I am also grateful to anonymous referees and Professor Michael Crossley for commenting on the penultimate version of this paper.
Notes
1. I am grateful to Maie Sőll, Estonian Ministry of Education in Tartu, for providing this and subsequent information on 19 June 2005.
2. Special thanks go to Aija Priedīte, Director of the National Programme for Latvian Language Teaching, for arranging a meeting for me with teacher trainers in Riga on 21 June 2005 to discuss these issues.
3. A major comparative cross‐Baltic research project on home language use of school children in the three capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius has recently been started in order to elicit data for this purpose (for more information see http://www.blain‐online.org/projects.html).