Language policy in Greek Cypriot education: tensions between national and pedagogical values

Abstract

The paper looks at developments in Greek language curricula in Cyprus during three periods: (1) the post-independence era from 1960 to the partition of the island in 1974; (2) the post-partition era from 1974 to 2003; and (3) the contemporary era, including the accession of Cyprus to the European Union in 2004, and the introduction of a new Greek curriculum in 2010. The paper seeks to document the tensions between national values associated with the teaching of Greek, and the need to implement new and progressive trends in language teaching that are increasingly driven by international developments in language pedagogy. The main question addressed in the paper is whether the degree of prominence achieved by the national objectives of language curricula, which is usually controlled by social and political factors that fluctuated during the three periods studied here, sets limits to the amount of innovation in matters of pedagogy and content that is possible. While some of the data suggest that this is so, this is a question that will be most decisively answered by data emerging from the implementation of the new curricula introduced in 2010, a process that is still in its early years.

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