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

Abstract

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.