Teaching Greek language and culture in the diaspora through a translingual and transcultural stance

Lytra, V. 2024. Μερικές σκέψεις προς μια διαγλωσσική και διαπολιτισμική στάση στη διδασκαλία της ελληνικής γλώσσας και του πολιτισμού στη διασπορά [Teaching Greek language and culture in the diaspora through a translingual and transcultural stance]. In: Koutsogiannis, D., Rothoni, A., Antonopoulou, S., Konstandinidis, A., and Gogonas, N. (eds) Διδασκαλία της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας στη Διασπορά [Teaching Greek in the diaspora]. Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Press, 271-277 [in Greek]

Ethnography

Religion is central to the everyday experiences of many individuals and communities worldwide. As a force for learning and socialisation and as an important marker of identity, it can provide a sense of membership and belonging within and across generations. The social and cultural practices in religions are shaped by individual as well as institutional, social and ideological forces and processes, instantiated locally, translocally and globally. Specific ways of utilising language and literacy can also be seen as a social practice that individuals draw upon for meaning making and building social relationships (Barton and Hamilton 1998). Language and literacy practices are then historically situated and embedded within power relations and societal discourses of distinction, where some languages and literacies become dominant and others are frequently silenced or considered irrelevant or problematic (Genishi and Dyson 2009). An emergent body of interdisciplinary scholarship has examined the intersection of language, literacy and religion from a social and cultural practice perspective. Methodologically, this body of research uses ethnography as a key conceptual approach to understanding social interaction for systematic knowledge building and the generation of theory

Greek heritage language teachers as emergency grassroots policy makers: reconciling learner centred responses with textbook heavy pedagogies during COVID-19 lockdown

This paper addresses the paucity of research on policy agents’ responses to the shift to teaching online during the first lockdown in heritage language education and pedagogy. Collected in the context of a small-scale exploratory study, it focuses on the reflective accounts of a group of heritage language teachers in a Greek school in francophone Switzerland. The paper builds on a translingual and transcultural orientation to language and language education (Lytra et al., 2022, Liberating Language Education. Multilingual Matters) and investigates language teachers’ emergency grassroots policy making through a critical ethnographic lens (Martin-Jones & da Costa Cabral, 2018, The critical ethnographic turn in research on language policy and planning. In J. W. Tollefson, & M. Pérez-Milans (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning (pp. 71–92). Oxford University Press). It demonstrates how teachers leveraged children’s developing digital abilities and expanded their semiotic repertoires. Concerned with delivering the curriculum, meeting language and literacy objectives and managing parental expectations, teachers simultaneously exploited children’s familiarity with established textbook heavy pedagogies which they adapted to different degrees. The acknowledgement and incorporation of children's digital abilities, and experiences to support Greek language learning did not encompass an integrative multimodal and multilingual approach

Multilingualism, multimodality and media engagement in classroom talk and action

This volume brings together a range of approaches to the role of media in processes of sociolinguistic change. Its 17 chapters and five section commentaries examine the impact of mediatization on language use and ideologies from five complementary perspectives: media influence on linguistic structure, media engagement in interaction, change in mass and new media language, language-ideological change, and the role of media for minority languages

The normalcy of linguistic and cultural diversity

As a researcher, educator, and community activist working with families, schools, and ethnic minority communities in the fields of multilingualism and language education across three countries (Greece, England, and Switzerland) for over twenty years, I have witnessed a dramatic shift in societal attitudes and discourses towards multilingualism – from discourses pathologizing linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingual speakers to discourses celebrating cognitive advantages, academic attainment, and access to higher education and future professional opportunities

Negotiating Monolingual Official Language Policy at the Nexus of Locally Situated Language Practices and Dominant Language Ideologies in a Language Minority Context

This paper examines how children and teachers negotiate the official Turkish only language policy as they manage their linguistic resources (Turkish and Kurmanji) in one Turkish preschool serving predominantly emergent bilingual Kurdish minority children. Using a critical ethnographic lens to language-in-education policy making (Martin-Jones and Da Costa Gabral, in: Tollefson, Pérez-Milans (eds) The Oxford handbook of language policy and planning, Oxford University Press, 2018), the study investigates how children and teachers navigate locally situated language practices and language ideologies that accord legitimacy and authority to standard Turkish and officially invisibilise Kurmanji in the preschool. Findings indicate that acting as agentive social actors teachers and children do not merely comply to the Turkish only language policy but they also adapt, recast, and contest it in social interaction. They stress the need to rethink the language-in-education policy in the Turkish educational system in ways that recognise and leverage teachers and children’s entire linguistic repertoires and experiences for teaching and learning