Andreas Demetriou


Andreas Demetriou is a Greek Cypriot developmental psychologist and former Minister of Education and Culture of Cyprus. Founding Fellow, Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts.

Life

Demetriou was born in Strongylo, Famagusta, Cyprus, on 15 August 1950. He is married to Julia Tsakalea and he has two sons, Pantelis and Demetris. After graduating from Pancyprium Gymnasium, the oldest secondary school in Cyprus, he went to Thessaloniki, Greece, where he studied psychology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He received a PhD in psychology in 1983. He was a professor of Developmental Psychology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki until 1996. He then moved to the University of Cyprus, where he was a professor of psychology until he became the Minister of Education and Culture. Currently he is professor of psychology and President of the University of Nicosia Research Foundation. He is also President of the Pancyprian Association of Psychologists.

Research

His research focuses on cognitive development. From the very beginning he attempted to develop a comprehensive theory of cognitive development aiming to integrate the empirically valid aspects of Piaget's theory with psychometric and cognitive theory. That is, the theory aimed to describe and explain intellectual development through the life span, individual differences in the rate and directions of intellectual development, and the cognitive mechanisms underlying development and individual differences. According to this theory, the human mind is organised in three functional levels. The first is the level of processing potentials, which involves information processing mechanisms underlying the ability to attend to, select, represent, and operate on information. The other two levels involve knowing processes, one oriented to the environment and another oriented to the self. The level oriented to the environment includes thought processes and functions that specialise in the representation and processing of information coming from different domains of the environment. Six domains are specified: Categorical, quantitative, causal, spatial, propositional, and social thought. The self-oriented level includes functions and processes oriented to monitoring, representing, and regulating processing potentials and the environment-oriented systems. It underlies executive control and planning and it generates self-perceptions that converge on a self-image that shape how we view and avail ourselves to problem solving and social interactions. Recently, he studies the relations between intellectual development and personality development and also the relations between intellectual development and brain development. He is also working on the educational applications of his theory., This theory is presented in more than 180 books and articles, such as The Architecture and Dynamics of Developing Mind, The Development of Mental Processing , and Unity and Modularity in the Mind and the Self. The journals New Ideas in Psychology Developmental Review, Developmental Science, Educational Psychology Review, and Intelligence, devoted special issues in the discussion of aspects of his theory.

Present

As a Minister of Education and Culture from March 2008 to August 2011 he led a large programme of reforms in Cypriot education which includes the development of new curricula across all subjects and grades from preschool to senior high school and the expansion of the university system of the country. He also contributed to elevating Cypriot universities into regional centres of excellence and co-operation. Moreover, he reformed the system of cultural governance so that creators and people of culture are involved in the decision making mechanisms concerning arts and culture. Finally, he attempted to improve the efficiency of the Ministry through a series of changes in its administrative operation.

List of achievements

Appointments