Exploring teachers’ language attitudes in the context of a bilingual primary educational system: The case of the Greek-Turkish minority schools in Thrace, Greece

Abstract

ABSTRACT Minority schools in Greek Thrace implement a model of bilingual education in primary and secondary education, where half of the lessons of the curriculum is taught in Greek and the other half, in Turkish. Although, at an institutional level, the bilingual character of the minority schools in Thrace is clearly defined regarding both legal operational dimensions, and teachers have been trained in a special tertiary school, their teaching ideologies and practice – reflecting actually their linguistic attitudes as well as their politico-ideological placements – do not seem to be consistent with contemporary perceptions and theories of managing bilingualism and translanguaging in teaching practice. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on minority (Turkish speaking) teachers’ beliefs toward the schools’ aims and their own teaching aims and practices, which are linked to their ideologies cοncerning bilingual development and translanguaging. The present study is based on semi-structured interviews with 21 educators, who teach at minority primary schools. The results show that there are different approaches inside the group of participants in relation to how they perceive and manage their student’s multilingual and bilingual profiles. Therefore, there is an urgent need for more support and training in new teaching approaches of how collaboration across languages could enhance students’ language learning.