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Children with a Refugee and Migrant Background in the Greek Formal Education: A Study of Language Support Classes

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The present study intends to investigate second/foreign language teaching in formal educational settings. In particular, it probes into the teachers’ and students’ profiles, the teachers’ goals and challenges, the teaching practices, the educational materials used and the classroom climate in various formal educational settings throughout Greece that offer language education to refugee and migrant children. The data were collected through teacher interviews and classroom observations in the context of the Postgraduate Programme ‘Language Education for Refugees and Migrants’ at the Hellenic Open University and analysed through the content analysis method. According to the results of the study, it was shown that there is great students’ linguistic and cultural diversity making these classrooms really heterogeneous. Simultaneously, it was revealed that most teachers, though they did their best to create a supportive educational environment providing not only knowledge but also psychological support, used a variety of teaching methods and practices mainly focusing on form. The results of the study are indicative of the need for teachers’ training to get special knowledge and appropriate skills to teach this socially vulnerable population, while further research is required to validate the findings of this study.
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In-Text Citation: (Manoli et al., 2021)
To Cite this Article: Manoli, P., Mouti, A., & Kantzou, V. (2021). Children with a Refugee and Migrant Background in the Greek Formal Education: A Study of Language Support Classes. Multilingual Academic Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 9(1), 1–15.