The pre-service training of secondary school teachers in Cyprus

Abstract

The present system of appointing secondary school teachers in Cyprus has been suffering for a long time now because of serious shortcomings in their initial training. Under current practice, teachers lack proper and systematic preparation in the teaching process, before their appointment. All parties involved in education recognize this problem, but in their effort to find a solution they came up against a set of issues that are the object of this study. These issues mainly concern the problem of selection of teachers, the administrative procedures of providing a proper preparation and the structure and the content of a pre-service training programme. In investigating the dimensions of these issues, the author takes into account the emerging role of education, the experiences and models that are followed in other contexts and realities, as well as the needs and forces that are shaping the situation in Cyprus. Based on the information from this investigation the author proposes a framework for a pre-service training programme.