Eve Kikas Receives National Lifetime Achievement Award
At the Estonian Teacher of the Year Gala held on 10 October, Eve Kikas, Head of the Centre for Educational Psychology and Professor of School Psychology at Tallinn University, received the national Lifetime Achievement Award for Education Professionals in recognition of her long-standing and outstanding contribution to integrating psychological knowledge into education.
Eve Kikas is one of Estonia’s leading figures in educational and school psychology. She has co-edited three handbooks on child development and authored more than 120 articles. She has led the development and modernisation of assessment tools for school psychologists and contributed to the creation of digital tools for assessing child development.
The award recognises her decades of work to ensure that psychological research informs everyday educational practice and supports children’s development and learning, as well as teachers’ work. Thanks to her efforts, research findings have been translated into practical resources for teachers, school psychologists and other education professionals.
Shaping the Development of School Psychology in Estonia
In addition to her research, Eve Kikas has made a significant contribution to the development of school psychology as a profession and to the training of future specialists. Through her leadership and support, opportunities to study school psychology at Estonian universities have been maintained, and new professionals have been trained in the field. She has also collaborated with the Estonian Association of School Psychologists for many years, helping to raise awareness of the profession, develop training for school psychologists and strengthen recognition of the field.
In 2024, Tallinn University established the Centre for Educational Psychology, which Kikas leads. The Centre promotes collaboration between researchers and practitioners. Its aim is to make psychological knowledge accessible to teachers and applicable in the classroom, including by supporting the development of educational and psychological assessment tools and intervention programmes, as well as integrating psychological knowledge into teacher education.
The national Lifetime Achievement Award for Education Professionals recognises Eve Kikas’s decades of dedication, research and contribution to ensuring that psychological science provides meaningful and practical support for education in Estonia.
This year marked the 14th time that Estonia’s national education awards have been presented. At the festive Teacher of the Year Gala, held on 10 October at the Vanemuine Concert Hall in Tartu, laureates were announced in 12 categories, and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Education Professionals was presented.