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

Discursive constructions of language and identity: parents' competing perspectives in London Turkish complementary schools

In this paper, I draw on interview data to explore parents' constructions of language and identity in two London Turkish complementary schools. I examine parents' evaluative talk about standard Turkish, Cypriot-Turkish and other regional varieties of Turkish, the cultural values they attach to them and images of personhood these invoke. I demonstrate how parents brought up in Turkey and Cyprus tend to privilege standard Turkish and acknowledge the crucial role Turkish complementary schools play as one of the key vehicles for its spread and promotion. Some parents, however, especially those politically active in promoting Cypriot-Turkish language, culture and history to the British-born generation, voice an alternative discourse where Cypriot-Turkish is intimately linked to their sense of self. Moreover, I investigate parents' perspectives of their children and of their own Turkish language competence in the case of parents brought up in the UK. I illustrate how their Turkish and their children's are compared against a ‘native’ speaker norm firmly located in the countries of origin. The parents' accounts show how different self- and other-ascriptions of proficiency in Turkish are linked to claims of or lack of ‘Turkishness’, largely shaped by their migration histories and narratives, personal and professional transnational experiences

Multicultural awareness through English: A potential contribution of TESOL to Greek schools

The cultural diversity now evident in Greek society creates educational challenges and opportunities. Space to address these is provided by the multicultural awareness aspects of the discourse of the Cross‐Thematic Curriculum Framework (CTCF). For English language classes, multicultural direction is provided through the disciplinary discussion of new teaching paradigm possibilities. In particular, these discussions encourage us to explore the repositioning of English teaching in Greek state schooling from a foreign language orientation towards a multicultural one. In this article, having set the context, we present the Multicultural Awareness Through English (MATE) paradigm. We conclude by illustrating the MATE paradigm in action