Teachers’ perspectives of teaching Greek in a multilingual Greek school in Luxembourg

Complementary schools have been said to offer a ‘safe haven’ (Lytra & Martin 2010) for immigrant and ethnic minority children to improve their home language and develop their ethnic and linguistic identity. While many scholars have emphasized the monolingual ideologies at play in these schools, students and teachers have nevertheless been reported to behave in a multilingual manner (Blackledge & Creese 2010, Li Wei 2014, Lytra 2011). This was true to a lesser extent in a Greek school in Luxembourg where the staff shared monolingual ideologies and tried to reinforce a sense of ‘Greekness’ by emphasizing the cultural prestige of ancient Greek (Tsagkogeorga 2016). Given the arrival of more Greek families to Luxembourg, one wonders to what extent the teachers will reconceptualise their pedagogical practices.
The present study draws on interviews with two Greek teachers carried out in January 2017 and 2018. One of the teachers migrated in 2016 to Luxembourg. The interviews focussed on pedagogical practices and changes thereof owing to the arrival of children of newly migrated families who had better linguistic skills than and a different understanding of Greek culture from children of established families.
First findings have shown that both teachers spoke positively about multilingualism. They were aware of the children’s differing linguistic, social and educational experiences and explained the challenges this caused for teaching. Nevertheless, they seemed to ignore the children’s repertoires by emphasising the teaching of Greek and offering little spaces to other languages (Kirsch forthcoming). The space attributed to culture differed between the teachers. More data will be collected and analysed thematically. The findings of this paper encourage teachers to reflect on their language policies and teaching approaches, and encourage them to capitalize on their students’ heterogeneity.