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

摘要

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 theGreek-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.