47 © The Author(s) 2020 L. Moos et al. (eds.), Educational Leadership, Improvement and Change, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47020-3_4 CHAPTER 4 Three Decades of Lithuanian Education: Self-Identity, Achievements, and Challenges Rasa Nedzinskaite-Maciuniene, Agne Brandisauskiene, and Inga Minelgaite Abstract Each state needs to fathom its context in order to shape the future of its education. Education does not exist by itself and is inevitably affected by the political, cultural, and socioeconomic conditions of the country. Therefore, the patchwork of experienced cultural heritage is deeply embedded in the human subconscious and can paint some, or other, educational phenomena in entirely different colors than might be expected. The independent Republic of Lithuania began to build its education system following a sociocultural paradigm. After three decades, the Lithuanian education sociocultural model is gradually changing to the economic model. Thus, looking at the development of the education R. Nedzinskaite-Maciuniene (*) • A. Brandisauskiene Education Academy, Vytautas Magnus University, Vilnius, Lithuania e-mail: rasa.nedzinskaite-maciuniene@vdu.lt; agne.brandisauskiene@vdu.lt I. Minelgaite School of Business, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland e-mail: inm@hi.is