Education is a powerful tool in our present age, especially when it comes to the growth of developing countries such as Armenia. Though Armenia has seen significant progress over the years, its educational system still lacks in many areas. Recently, we spoke with one of the country’s leading educators, Anush Shahverdyan. With the help of her insight, we had the chance to get a glimpse of Armenia’s educational system from her “insider” perspective. We interviewed Anush Shahverdyan with the purpose of sparking a dialogue and gaining awareness about the current issues that Armenia faces.
Anush, please tell us a little about yourself, your education, and work experience? As an educator, what has been the driving force behind your decision to dedicate your professional career to this field?
The Armenian society has always placed great value on education as a precondition to professional success. Many Armenian parents would rather starve than fail to provide the resources for their children to attend institutions of higher education. My family was no exception. It was their support that helped me see the doors and opportunities that a good education could open up. Not surprisingly, their influence helped me identify my lifelong ambition – to become an education specialist – at an early age.
Since my early teen years, I knew my talents were best applied in the academic field, helping others realize their potential and dreams. I worked hard to make this dream a reality. My career started as a schoolteacher, then as a university instructor. After obtaining a graduate degree in the United States, I moved into working with international organizations dealing with education, economic growth, and civil society issues in Armenia. I worked on various international projects such as Project Harmony, USAID CAPS, EU-funded VET project, and the World Bank, while continuing my teaching career.
I kept close ties with academia and taught for nearly 20 years in parallel with my main job, having daily interactions with students and firsthand exposure to education from within. I carried out research and published nationally and internationally. Among other things, I supported Special Olympics Armenia for many years, which aims to increase the social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities.
What are some of the current issues in the Armenian education system?
Overall, the Armenian education sector has seen improvements but continues to present challenges. The Armenia Government Program 2021-2026 has adopted the vision of establishing a knowledge-based and innovative economy. It has declared knowledge and innovation as the main driving force for economic development. According to Armenia’s most recently adopted State Development Program of Education until 2030, knowledge and creativity are safeguards for ensuring human capital development and sustainable economic and cultural growth. The government’s financial resources allocated toward education are no longer considered a cost but an investment required for the state and society’s development, investment in human resource development, which, in long run, will get significant return, while the cost of ignorance can be very high for every society.
Despite the accent on building a knowledge-based economy, employers in Armenia face difficulties in recruiting and retaining workers with the required skills. They see workforce skills as a significant obstacle to their activities and a primary binding constraint to the country’s growth. Employers find that young workers lack occupation-specific technical skills, as well as socio-emotional skills and transversal skills related to problem-solving, critical and creative thinking, teamwork, and leadership.
Educators, while well respected by society, have been underpaid in Armenia. Curricula have been overloaded with disconnected factual knowledge not updated or integrated with explicit learning goals. In Armenian schools, traditional lecture-based teaching and theoretical content are still prevalent, while student-centered active learning is relatively rare. Among other subjects, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning is theoretical and disconnected; schools lack science laboratories to teach STEM.
Weaknesses of higher education in Armenia include limited financial resources and inadequate infrastructure. There is also a lack of professional development opportunities for faculty, resulting in outdated skills. Furthermore, there is a big problem with obsolete or scarce instructional materials and equipment. Even more importantly, Armenian higher education faces challenges in the quality and relevance of programs to prepare students to build careers.
This situation demands that we invest now in programs that prepare youth for competing in the global economy and actively generate new employment opportunities for Armenians. In the field of pedagogy, we need better education programs to prepare our future teachers. These programs should include rigorous practicum and internship courses to produce good teachers and place the best educators in Armenia’s public schools to prepare the person, the leader, and the intellectual to meet today’s challenges.
You have been part of the curriculum reform project in Armenia. Could you please tell us about the experience?
Armenia is implementing an ambitious curriculum reform to provide opportunities for students to reach their full potential and to ensure the country’s social, economic, and political development. As part of these reforms, Armenia is looking to transition into a competency-based education system which is a complex and challenging road, because all resources, curricula, and processes have historically been knowledge-based, teacher-centered, and linear. Additionally, the country faced an urgent need in off-loading the curriculum.
The curriculum reform project being implemented in Armenia with the support of development partners addresses the development of the younger generation’s abilities, self-guided learning, research, and creative skills and tries to make them more competitive. The plan is to avoid the current subject-oriented approach with self-sufficient individual subjects and move to an integrated approach, which ensures interdisciplinary and intra-disciplinary integration of subjects and contributes to the overall outcome through each subject.
Following extensive teacher training, the year-long pilot of the revised curriculum in Tavush province of the country, accompanied by formal mentoring for all teachers, laid a strong foundation in identifying the scope and load of the new curriculum along with its relevance and effectiveness before the national roll-out. Thus, the changes targeted through the recent curriculum reform have been conceptual and envisaged changes in the content, expected pedagogy, and assessment system. Teachers are seen as active actors whose voices are sought and considered throughout the reform process, as much as the principals/school leaders are regarded as the cultivators of a culture of change who initiate and sustain improvement at the school level.
In curriculum reform, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Curriculum reform is a matter of national affairs, and every country needs to decide what is best based on its own context, unique history, values, and strategic priorities. To prepare their students for the future, each country must define what knowledge and abilities are most valuable in their society. At the same time, it is important to study the international trends, such as international student assessments and certain general principles that might still apply regardless of the difference in specificities.
You have been teaching on a university level for nearly 20 years. What has your teaching philosophy been?
In general, my teaching encourages active learning. I believe the “process” of learning is as important as the “product”. Students should be involved in “digging” for the truth, not just “swallowing the digest knowledge”. I facilitate teamwork and promote the principles of academic integrity, the pursuit of scholarly activity in an honest and responsible manner. This is especially important when working with students from cultures which for years have had a more collective sense of identity and may not perceive well the difference between individual and public property. By making the classes more challenging and intrinsically interesting, I tried to uplift the traditional culture of university learning, thus encouraging students to seek and promote social transformation and change in our society.
I believe people are learners – they have learned, are learning, and will continue to learn in the future. Learning — from foundational literacy and numeracy to critical thinking — is essential, therefore, I use ways to transfer and reinforce learning in my environment. I value intellectual humility as opposed to a fixed mindset, often associated with overconfidence. Intellectual humility is the openness to consider alternative ideas, the ability to defend one’s beliefs without imposing them, and being open to accept one’s intellectual limitations and opposing views while learning from them. Being intellectually humble allows people to learn and acquire new skills constantly. This open-mindedness is an intellectual virtue that allows for growth mindset. Thus, I have strived to build a sense of intellectual humility in my students and promote growth and change in their lives.
How will today’s reforms contribute to the future of Armenia and Armenia’s younger generations?
For years, the ongoing developments pointed to the need for meaningful change in education. To design a system that is relevant for tomorrow, predicting new trends and requirements of tomorrow’s workplace, is a challenge in today’s technology-driven world. What is certain is that instead of specific subject knowledge, 21st century skills are ways of thinking, ways of working, ways of living, and ways of learning.
In Armenia, education is regarded as the vehicle for progress and hence, it is a priority for the country. Transforming education systems requires identifying and implementing impactful and realistic interventions supported by strong demand for reform from within and with support of development partners. The government of Armenia has taken significant steps and has initiated important reforms. However, we need consistent efforts and increased public spending on education to produce the needed outcomes and build human capital.
Having generations of young people equipped with relevant competences and values who could ultimately lead the development of their country, society and universe can only be possible with the right educators, those who are well-trained, possess multidimensional knowledge, versatile and multidisciplinary approaches to their field of study, subject matter and expertise, who are able to encourage the students’ desire for learning. Hence, the need for the quality preparation of teachers and their ongoing professional development.
I believe in the future of Armenia’s education; the country is revising its content of education, making meaningful changes, improving teacher policies, and investing in school infrastructure. These are all needed to provide quality education to all citizens. The country has a clear roadmap for investments in key areas to unlock the potential impact of ongoing and future reforms aimed at improving the overall quality of education in the country.
Thus, Armenia is on the right path: building an evolving curriculum, emphasizing active, inquiry-based learning, enhancing the conditions for learning across educational levels, and creating incentives for teachers. The country prioritizes improvements in education; from getting children off to the right start, improving the content of education, to focusing on skills building and innovation. The latter is essential in helping raise the living standards for future generations.
Anush Shahverdyan, PhD in Education
Anush Shahverdyan is an education manager and researcher with 20+ years of professional experience in academia, NGO sector and the World Bank. She has been working in the education sector since 2000 at the crossroads of international aid and non-governmental organizations contributing to Armenia’s critical reforms in human capital development. She has extensive experience in teaching and research, policy and data analysis and project design and implementation. As a senior international consultant at the World Bank, she is involved in business development, client relationship and project management of multiple lending and non-lending education operations in Armenia as well as high-level coordination at the level of Ministries of Education.
Since 2001, she has taught BA and MA courses in Education Management and Organizational Behavior. Previously, she worked for EU-, USAID- and U.S. Department of State-funded projects supporting workforce development and international school partnership activities. She has also supported Special Olympics Armenia for many years, striving to increase the social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities.
Anush has graduate degrees in Pedagogy from Armenian State Pedagogical University and in Education Administration from Kent State University, USA.
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