Letter from the Guest Editor

Abstract

The education system of Cyprus seems to be improving, but it still lags behind those of other European countries. Although the Cyprus Government seems to underfund education in relation to other services, in the last few years there have been efforts for improvement, especially after the introduction of the new curriculum in 2011. Yet there is still a general disatisfaction amongst educationalists regarding the effectiveness of our schools. In this section of the journal, we consider the current trends of education in Cyprus. In the first paper, Hajisoteriou and Angelides explore the global debate for intercultural education at the national level of Cyprus. Papanastasiou and Evagorou, in the second paper, present how data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) can be used for a professional development workshop focused on helping teachers identify reasons for low achievement in science, and they propose ways to support students in science. In the third paper, Karageorgakis and Nisiforou explore the educational affordances and students’ perceptions of virtual reality systems as supportive tools for teaching English as a foreign language and concluding, in the end, the implications for the implementation of virtual reality in the educational system in Cyprus are discussed. Finally in the fourth paper, Neophytou, Valiandes and Hajisoteriou examine the implementation of interculturally differentiated instruction by Cypriot teachers in real, mixed-ability and culturally diverse classroom settings.
Panayiotis Angelides