Multicultural Initial Teacher Training in Greece: Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for Migrant Education and Social Justice

Introduction

Over the last 30 years, Greece has transformed from an emigration country to a migrants’ destination (Triandafyllidou, 2000). The documented non-Greek nationals residing in the country increased from 1.6% of the total population in 1991 to 8% in 2020 (Hellenic Statistical Authority, 2020). Additionally, Greece has also received a great influx of undocumented migrants since 2014, the vast majority of whom comprise asylum seekers fleeing persecution from war-affected countries (Triandafyllidou, 2017). This transformation has had a significant impact on the country’s population makeup. Despite their noticeable presence in Greece over the last three decades, migrants have been persistently excluded from the mainstream conceptualizations and representations of the national ‘we’ (Gropas & Triandafyllidou, 2011). Instead they are perceived as an economic, security and cultural threat, embodying incompatible culturally diverse elements and threatening the alleged homogenous Greek society (Maronitis, 2017). Indeed, Greek society has been galvanized on ideals of a common national identity, based on the triptych of Greek descent, Greek language and Christian Orthodox religion (Kakos & Palaiologou, 2014).

The cumulative increase in the number of migrants present in the country has been keenly reflected in its student population, with multicultural classrooms now forming the norm rather than the exception (Stergiou & Simopoulos, 2019). Despite the established presence of migrant students in the Greek educational system, data reveal that they face significant educational inequities and several structural barriers. These include the sole use of Greek as the language of teaching instruction, educational curricula and textbooks that are not multiculturally responsive, neither representing nor acknowledging their cultures (Anagnostou & Nikolova, 2017). They also involve vastly ethnocentric educational policies that leave almost no room for revised multicultural understandings of belonging, while confusing social cohesion with assimilation (Sotiropoulou, 2020).

Is there any hope for changing the adverse reality pictured above? This chapter argues that a major stepping stone towards the creation of a more socially just and inclusive educational landscape in Greece can come from the bottom up; from the country’s future teachers (Kourti & Androussou, 2013) and the initial teacher training provided to them (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018). This is because future teachers are the agents who will interpret and enact educational curricula and policies (Benson & Fiarman, 2020). With education being currently officially recognized as one of the spaces in which “racial discrimination is felt most strongly” in Europe (European Commission, 2020, p.4), future educators can play an active role in creating educational spaces that are anti-racist and anti-biased (Benson & Fiarman, 2020; Kendi, 2019). Consequently, with adequate and appropriate training, future teachers could act as agents of educational change driven by anti-racist ideas (Kendi, 2019), through disrupting existing inequities present in the educational structures and materials in order to promote social justice and equal opportunities for all students (Benson & Fiarman, 2020; Cochran-Smith et al., 2018).