During the first years of Lithuania's independence declared in 1990 and the dawn of its new life, unique processes of educational transformation took place. A team of diverse people committed to change was brought together by a strong and charismatic leader, Dr M. Lukšiene. Through the joint efforts of educators, scientists, artists, writers, and others, the Concept of the National School was developed in 1989. The concept introduced a unique vision of education based on liberal and democratic principles, the main task of which was the development of a free personality. Man and society, freedom and responsibility, the nation and the global world were not competing or conflicting concepts but harmonious, interdependent, and interwoven in the vision of the developers of the educational reform. The idea of liberal and democratic education was a core of the educational reform and later became an integral part of other educational documents, including the "Concept of a Good School" (2015). The essential aims of the National School Concept - openness and humanity, freedom and responsibility, respect for the individual, and commitment to the ideals of democracy - remain relevant today and hopefully tomorrow.

The phenomenon of educational reform has been extensively researched. However, the individuals responsible for designing and implementing these reforms have not received adequate attention from researchers. There is a lack of authentic evidence regarding the survival of educational reform, its significance for people's personal and professional lives, its current perspective, and the importance attached to it by reformers in assessing the current educational system and the development of society as a whole. This type of research is deficient not only in Lithuania but also in other European countries that have undergone or are undergoing socio-political transformations aimed at building or sustaining democratic values. The personal experiences hold immense value as historical testimony and provide a better understanding of the path of educational reforms, as well as insights into the future.
This paper analyses retrospective testimonies of individuals who participated in education reform at the beginning of Lithuanian independence, as well as their current reflections and insights into the development of the education system. The analysis examines the phenomenon of educational transformation in terms of its reflection on the reformers' experiences of political and ideological ruptures, the birth of ideas of free education, and the projections of their implementation in practice. By analyzing the different narratives and attitudes of the research participants towards the same phenomenon, the factors determining the unity, directionality, and sustainability of the transformation ideas are revealed.   

The research is based on cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), which comprises three main ideas. Firstly, humans act collectively, learn by doing, and communicate through their actions. Secondly, humans create, use, and modify various tools to learn and communicate. Finally, community plays a central role in the process of creating and interpreting meaning, and therefore in all forms of learning, communication, and action. (Foot, 2014, p.3) CHAT is used to discuss the correlation between personal and collective agency, and to reveal the transformative and ecological aspects of agency in our research data.

For the research project, we conducted interviews with 18 active participants of the educational reform using a life narrative approach (Goodson, Gill, 2011). This approach blends the personal subjective experiences of research participants with the researcher's worldview and experience, within a wider social, political, and historical context. Collaborative inquiry is a process in which research participants and researchers engage in a dialogue to reflect on the meanings of their past experiences for the present and future of educational transformation. The study employed in-depth non-structured interviews as the primary method of inquiry. Participants were asked to reflect on their experiences during the initial stage of educational reform (1988-1995), the influence of those experiences on their present professional life, and their aspirations for the future of educational transformation. This paper presents the initial and preliminary analyses of interview data, which reveal interrelations between personal and collective agency.

In this paper, we present a small part of an ongoing study on the experiences of education reformers, focusing on the interrelation between personal and collective agency, reflected in lived experiences. The findings of the study will be presented in the broader context of Eastern and Central European countries that have undergone a transition from one social order to another. We argue that in the transformative context of social life, an individual as an agent ('I') is not limited to their own experiences or the exaggeration of their role, but rather perceives themselves as part of the whole ('we'). The study's findings confirm that there is little distinction between the use of 'I' and 'we' as acting agents. The notion of collective agency exists in an individual consciousness and manifests as collective will, desire, belief, and emotion. These two poles of individual and collective agencies are closely intertwined and equally manifest as the lived experiences of all research participants. The bridges that tightly connect them are the ideas of Freedom and Responsibility. Individuals have the freedom to think and create, while also bearing responsibility for others, the future of education, and the future of their nation. Individuals, as committed, self-aware, critically reflective agents represent themselves in singular and plural terms.

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