Educators’ perspectives on translanguaging schoolscape and language education for refugee students in Greek educational settings

ABSTRACT

The past and current situation in Greece regarding the refugee crisis has created educators’ need to apply new educational strategies to address refugee students, such as the use of translanguaging, linguistic landscape and schoolscape as pedagogical tools. That is why the present study attempts to reveal the degree of educators’ employment of practices such as translanguaging and inclusion of students’ L1 in the creation of linguistic signs and how they are reflected in the schoolscape. Based on photographs and interviews gathered by eleven educators in formal and non-formal education in Greek schools, we decoded translanguaging and sign-making practices by identifying a taxonomy of different functions represented by the signs, the initiative of teachers as primary sign-makers, and the promotion of teaching Greek as L2. The study suggests that incorporating students’ and teachers’ translingual signs and multimodal practices in learning procedures paves a promising way to designing a competent curriculum for teaching language diversity and encouraging intercultural awareness.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugee students
• translanguaging
• schoolscape
• second language learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Photographs taken by the researchers in the camp of Northern Greece are the following: 4 (classroom), 7 (classroom), 8 (classroom), 9 (teachers’ office), 11 (classroom), 12 (classroom), 13 (school corridor), 14 (school corridor), 15 (classroom), 16 (classroom), 17 (foyer), 18 (foyer), 19 (foyer), 20 (school main entrance).

2. Photographs that were sent via e-mail to the researchers by focal teachers were the following: 1 (ZEP classroom in Samos), 2 (classroom in another camp of Northern Greece), 3 (DYEP classroom in Chios), 5 (general education classroom in Athens), 6 (classroom in urban private setting in Thessaloniki), 10 (DYEP classroom in Chios).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margarita Karafylli

Margarita Karafylli is an Educator of Modern Greek as L2 in NGOs.

Christina Maligkoudi

Christina Maligkoudi is Assistant Professor at the Department of Primary Education at the Democritus University of Thrace and a Tutor at the Hellenic Open University.