“Framing the change as a means for ensuring and maintaining the legitimization and management of educational reform: the case of Cyprus (2008-13)”
Maria Athanasiou
Pages 191 – 213
Abstract
This paper addresses the concept of “educational change” aiming to explore how it was framed by the
Government, the Ministry of Education and other reform actors in the Republic of Cyprus. It specifically focuses on the Educational Reform of the period 2008-13 proposed and implemented by the left-wing Government of D. Christofias and suspended eventually and placed under review by the right-wing Government of N. Anastasiades. Through archival research and with the help of the methodological tools of Content Analysis and Hermeneutics, the current paper argues that the twofold framing of change as a “public endeavor” and an endeavor that will bring about the “improvement” of education, society and economy, served as a mechanism for ensuring and maintaining the necessary consensus and legitimization of the reform, as well as a mechanism for managing the change itself. Several additional, theoretical features of change are embedded in this dual framing of the Educational Reform of the period 2008-13 and are extracted and discussed in this paper.