Greek as an additional language

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Greek as an additional language (GAL) school students in Cyprus in late modernity
An ethnographic study of three parallel intensive Greek language classes in two
Greek-Cypriot state primary schools

Charalambous, Ioanna

Awarding institution:
King's College London

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Download date: 06. Nov. 2017
Greek as an additional language (GAL) school
students in Cyprus in late modernity:
An ethnographic study of three parallel intensive Greek
language classes in two Greek-Cypriot state primary
schools

Ioanna Charalambous

A Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the
PhD Degree at King’s College London

December 2014
Acknowledgements

I would firstly like to express my thanks to my supervisors Professor Constant Leung
and Dr Roxy Harris for the astute advice and continuous encouragement and
guidance that they provided me with throughout my research and write up. I would
especially like to thank Dr Roxy Harris for the regular meetings and abundance of
commentary on my writings through the recent challenging months. His ideas have
been invaluable and inspiring.

I am also appreciative of my participants (head-teachers, teachers and students) who
voluntarily participated in my study and happily shared their experiences.

Furthermore, my gratitude goes to my friends, who supported me and helped me with
proof reading and offering their generous opinions. Last in sequence but not least in
importance, I would like to express my thanks to my parents for their unyielding
warmth, support and encouragement. I dedicate my thesis to them.
2
Στους γονείς µου…

3
Abstract

This thesis is an ethnographic study investigating the misplacement of students in
parallel intensive Greek language classes in Greek-Cypriot primary schools. In 2008,
the Cyprus Ministry of Education issued a policy document about the setting up of
classes for migrant students to be given intensive instruction in the Greek language in
Greek-Cypriot state primary schools, and since then, parallel classes have been
offered in schools. However, the establishment of the parallel classes was prompted
by the need to respond to EU discourses about human rights for minorities and not by
a change in the Hellenocentric ideology that dominates the Greek-Cypriot
educational system. The fact that the policy for parallel classes was developed as
something extra to regular school life and on the margins of the mainstream reveals
that the Hellenocentric character of the curriculum was left untouched. This project
focuses on three parallel classes in two primary schools and draws on data collected
during fieldwork that lasted five months. The focal children had a migrant
background but either total or considerable experience of living within Greek-
Cypriot society and competence in everyday spoken Greek-Cypriot dialect; yet, they
had been selected for parallel intensive Greek language tuition away from their
mainstream class. Taking into account the dominant Hellenocentric ideology in the
Greek-Cypriot educational system and with anti-essentialist cultural studies as the
theoretical stance, the thesis explores how this phenomenon came about. The
empirical investigation shows that children were misplaced because Hellenocentric
ideology cannot envisage people who do not have Greek-Cypriot parents and a
Greek-only orientation to language as anything else but 'the other'. The thesis
concludes that new approaches are necessary in the era of the new globalisation in
which new patterns of language and superdiversity are constantly emerging.
4
Table of contents

Acknowledgements 2
Abstract 4
Table of contents 5

INTRODUCTION 8

PART ONE: SETTING THE CONTEXT 13
CHAPTER 1 THEORISING ETHNICITY AND LANGUAGE
IN THE GREEK-CYPRIOT CONTEXT 14
1.0 Introduction 14
1.1 The Cypriot context 15
1.1.1 Historical overview 15
1.1.2 Bidialectism in the Greek-Cypriot community 18
1.2 The Greek-Cypriot educational context 21
1.2.1 The hegemony of SMG in language policy 22
1.2.2 The bidialectal reality of Greek-Cypriot classes 24
1.2.3 The long tradition of ‘Hellenocentrism’ 26
1.3 New migration in the Greek-Cypriot community 30
1.3.1 The context of new migration in the Greek-Cypriot
community 30
1.3.2 Current statistics regarding linguistic, ethnic and cultural
diversity in Greek-Cypriot primary education 35
1.4 Alternative Perspectives 38
1.4.1 ‘Imagined communities’ of nationality 39
1.4.2 Nationality in the era of globalisation 48
1.4.3 The role of language 52
1.4.4 The role of education 55
1.5 Research on the education of GAL students in the Greek-Cypriot
community 58
Conclusion 65

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCHING ETHNICITY AND LANGUAGE
IN THE GREEK-CYPRIOT CONTEXT 67
2.0 Introduction 67
2.1 Problems for the ethnographic researcher in the Greek-Cypriot
context 68
2.2 Researching ethnicity and language through an ethnographic
approach 70
2.3 Research design 76
2.3.1 Sites for data collection 76
2.3.2 Methods and techniques 79
2.4 The role of the researcher 86
2.4.1 Being reflexive 86
2.4.2 Ethical considerations 87
2.5 A short note on transcription and translation 87
Conclusion 88

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CHAPTER 3 THE PRODUCTION AND CIRCULATION
OF THE POLICY DOCUMENT FOR PARALLEL INTENSIVE
GREEK LANGUAGE LEARNING CLASSES 89
3.0 Introduction 89
3.0.1 The importance of Ball’s ‘policy cycle’ model in shaping
the analysis chapters 90
3.1 ‘The context of influence’ – Symbolic policy 92
3.1.1 EU pressures 93
3.2 Greek-Cypriot MEC’s response to new migration: integration of
GAL students and interculturalism 99
3.3 ‘Intercultural education’ or promoting a national identity? 105
Conclusion 108

PART TWO: ETHNICITY AND LANGUAGE IN THE CONTEXT
OF THE SCHOOL 110
CHAPTER 4 INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS FOR HEAD-TEACHERS 111
4.0 Introduction 111
4.0.1 The identification of problems 112
4.1 The problem of organising intensive Greek classes parallel to
the mainstream curriculum 117
4.2 No guidance instructions from the MEC regarding who is going to
teach these classes in the absence of GAL specialists 126
4.3 No clear direction about how to assess pupils’ Greek language
proficiency 134
4.4 No clear direction regarding from which mainstream subject
classes the pupils should be withdrawn 138
4.5 No guidelines concerning the teaching goals and content of
PIGLLC 141
Conclusion 142

CHAPTER 5 CLASSROOM PROBLEMS FOR GAL TEACHERS 146
5.0 Introduction 146
5.0.1 Teachers’ solutions and remaining problems 149
5.1 The problem of how to assist GAL students in learning SMG
grammar 151
5.1.1 Mrs A’s grammar lessons 152
5.1.2 Mrs B’s communicative language lessons 164
5.2 The problem of how to deal with the existence of GCD in
everyday school and classroom interaction 180
5.2.1 Mrs A’s grammar teaching in a mixture of GCD and SMG 180
5.2.2 Mrs B’s avoidance of using GCD and her
clarifications when necessary 182
5.3 The problem of choosing between monolingual instruction or
GAL instruction using home languages 184
5.3.1 Mrs A’s monolingual instructional approach 184
5.3.2 Mrs B’s GAL instruction using home languages 185
Conclusion 191

CHAPTER 6 THE HETEROGENEITY OF GAL STUDENTS:
Biographical Trajectories and Linguistic Repertoires 194
6.0 Introduction 194
6.0.1 Problems in the imagining of GAL students 196
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6.1 Imagining GAL students in a different way 197
6.1.1 Lazaros 198
6.1.2 Samira 204
6.1.3 Andrei 211
6.1.4 Nina 219
6.2 Insights from literature: The notion of ‘superdiversity’ 224
6.2.1 Pedagogic implications for GAL 226
Conclusion 229

CHAPTER 7 GAL STUDENTS AND HELLENOCENTRISM:
The effects of ethnic and linguistic hierarchies 232
7.0 Introduction 232
7.1 The ethnic and linguistic hierarchies 234
7.2 The influence of the ethnic and linguistic hierarchies on students 252
7.2.1 Lazaros 253
7.2.2 Samira 257
7.2.3 Andrei 259
7.2.4 Nina 264
7.3 The influence of the ethnic and linguistic hierarchies on
school culture 265
7.3.1 Inner City Primary School: Holding on to Hellenocentrism 266
7.3.2 Outer City Primary School: Moving towards
interculturalism 273
Conclusion 289

PART THREE: RETHINKING ETHNICITY AND LANGUAGE
IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SCHOOLS 291
CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION:
Rethinking ethnicity and language in Greek-Cypriot schools 292
8.0 Introduction 292
8.1 Summary of the thesis arguments 293
8.2 The importance of an ethnographic approach 299
8.3 Rethinking ethnicity - The new Greek-Cypriots 300
8.3.1 SMG/GCD and the problem of ethnicity 302
8.4 The term ‘GAL’ 303
8.5 Research limitations and areas for further research 304
Conclusion 305

APPENDICES 306
Appendix 1: GAL Pupils’ Profiles 306
Appendix 2: Data Collection Summary 307
Appendix 3: Transcription Conventions 308
Appendix 4: MEC’s official policy document for PIGLLC 309
Appendix 5: Excerpt from the interview with Inner City head-teacher 312
Appendix 6: First stage of Mrs A’s grammar lesson - Communicative
language activity 315
Appendix 7: Examples of Lazaros’s schoolwork 318
Appendix 8: Excerpt from fieldnotes – Incident with Samira crying
outside of her mainstream class 322

REFERENCES 323
7
INTRODUCTION

Introduction
As a result of recent human mobility, notably in the form of economic migration, in
many educational systems all over the world, monolingual and monocultural students
comprise the minority rather than the majority (Cummins and Schecter, 2003). In this
changing world, the Greek-speaking community of Cyprus1 could not remain
unaffected. The increased immigration over the past two decades has transformed the
Greek-Cypriot community into an increasingly linguistically, ethnically and
culturally diverse society and this, as Tsiplakou and Georgi (2008) state, has
unsurprisingly led to a sudden growth of the number of children who have a home
language other than Greek among the student population.

The Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) has responded to the
increasing number of pupils who have a home language other than Greek. In 2008,
the MEC issued a policy document about the setting up of classes for these students
to receive intensive instruction in the Greek language parallel to the mainstream
curriculum in Greek-Cypriot state primary schools, and since then, parallel classes
have been offered in schools. However, the establishment of these classes was
prompted by the need to respond to EU discourses about human rights for minorities
and not by a change in the Hellenocentric ideology that dominates the Greek-Cypriot
educational system. The fact that the policy for parallel classes was developed as
something extra to regular school life and on the margins of the mainstream reveals
that the Hellenocentric character of the curriculum was left untouched.

Taking into account the dominant Hellenocentric ideology in the Greek-Cypriot
educational system, my PhD thesis looks at the enactment of the policy for parallel
intensive Greek language learning classes (PIGLLC) inside school institutions. My
key interest is the phenomenon of misplacement in these classes of students who
have a migrant background but either full or considerable experience of living within
Greek-Cypriot society and competence in everyday spoken Greek-Cypriot dialect.

1 My PhD thesis focuses on the area controlled by the Republic of Cyprus, that is, the southern part of
the island. The Greek-Cypriot community resides in this part of the island. My study concentrates on
parallel classes for intensive Greek language teaching in Greek-Cypriot state primary education.
8
The thesis examines how this phenomenon came about and why it continues by
drawing on data collected during fieldwork that lasted five months in three parallel
classes in two primary schools. Even though my thesis concentrates on four focal
students in particular, I looked at a total of 17 children across four different parallel
classes in two schools. The data from the 17 students informs my argument that
many of these students were incorrectly placed in these parallel classes. More
specifically, 12 children from the parallel classes already spoke Greek at a similar
level to other Greek-Cypriot children, as the table in appendix 1 illustrates. The
reason I focussed on four specific pupils is so that I could research these individuals
more thoroughly. Also, even though I collected data in four parallel classes, I
concentrate on three instead of four classes because I was not given access to audio-
recordings in one of them and therefore I was unable to analyse the students’
linguistic repertoires closely. Nevertheless, the ethnographic and observational data I
collected about these children informs my interpretations.

I adopt a theoretical approach to ethnicity and language, which is informed by anti-
essentialist and late-modern cultural theory treating ethnicity as an open category as
well as acknowledging its complexity and dynamics in contemporary societies.
People are also considered as learning language through engagement with a wide
range of communities, networks and groups. Furthermore, my thesis draws on
ethnographic methods and aspires to contribute to a small body of research applying
ethnographic approaches to research on immigrant students in the Greek-Cypriot
community.

Deciding to undertake this study
My interest in this topic started when at the age of 21 I found myself part of a new
generation of teachers entering the Greek-Cypriot educational system who had to
face some difficult questions. During my final year of teacher training, I was
expected to teach in a Greek-Cypriot state primary school in Nicosia and I realised
that there were immigrant children in this school, but the teachers had not developed
a sophisticated response to their presence in the classroom.

This was the first time I had been aware that there were so many such students in
Greek-Cypriot schools. When I was a pupil myself in Greek-Cypriot state education
9