The Greek primary school classroom is a linguistic mosaic, where students bring their language experiences, and teachers have to carry out teaching in a way that all students are involved. The Greek literature on the teachers' role towards the linguistic diversity of their class focuses on beliefs and attitudes, but also specific training needs. However, teachers should have the chance to talk about what they are doing in the classroom. This chapter presents the findings of a qualitative research of a qualitative nature about the aspects of teachers' identity concerning language teaching material creation. Data were elicited through semi-structured interviews with 60 primary teachers, who shared their views and experiences about the adaptation of their material for language teaching. The data were transcribed and analyzed through the thematic analysis technique. The findings suggest that pedagogical choices, adaptability, active involvement, empathy, and reflection are key elements of teachers' identity in relation to the creation of material for language teaching.
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The Greek educational setting is shaped by the variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds of children who arrive in the country due to refugee or immigrant flows. Attending Greek primary school is compulsory for all children, whether they come from the local population, or from immigrant or refugee families. Relevant literature to the teacher's role towards the presence of other than Greek languages in the classroom, mainly focuses on beliefs, perceptions and attitudes towards the students' particular languages (Maligkoudi et al., 2018; Gkaravelas & Koutousi, 2018; Gorter & Arocena, 2020; Magos & Simopoulos, 2020), the teachers' difficulty in dealing with students’ with different linguistic background (Galani & Stavrinidis, 2020) and their training needs (Magos & Margaroni, 2018; Zachos et al, 2020) as well.
School should contribute significantly to the smooth adjustment of children who are forcibly or voluntarily displaced from their homeland, meeting their emotional along with their learning and social needs (Nakeyar et al., 2018). It goes beyond a shadow of a doubt that the coexistence of these children with the students of the “dominant” group is sufficient in itself, and any intervention by the teacher should aim at cultivating, developing and promoting values such as respect for diversity, solidarity, empathy and cooperativeness (Hymel & Katz, 2019; Farmer et al., 2019). This stance on behalf of the teacher could promote an inclusive and diverse environment which offers opportunities and makes the most of children's abilities and skills within the setting they live and grow up (Stergiou, 2019). However, making these children feel emotionally safe in the school environment presupposes making them feel that their L1 language(s) is/are welcome. This means that teachers should also be well acquainted with the children's linguistic and cultural backgrounds in order to appropriately adjust the latter’s interactions with each other within the setting of a multilingual and multicultural classroom (Baker, 2018). In addition, language instruction should develop according to the children's interests by engaging them in creative cooperative activities and by incorporating the investigation of aspects of the L1 with the help of the children-native speakers (ibid.).
Thus, these children acquire a resounding presence and identity even if they still have not managed to fully acquire the language of the dominant group (Ohta, 2017; Stergiou & Simopoulos, 2019). In practice, this means that appropriate and well adapted teaching materials and textbooks are of major importance (Maligkoudi et al., 2018; Maligkoudi & Tsaousidis, 2020; Kantzou et al 2017), which is practically impossible for every possible educational, learning and emotional need. Therefore, this implies that the teacher is the one who should take on the responsibility for the creation of the material needed for language teaching to both indigenous and non-indigenous students. Besides, designing language teaching materials is one of the teachers’ task (Garton & Graves, 2014; Mirsharapovna, 2022) and due to its creative nature, it could highlight many aspects of teacher’s identity, especially within modern educational contexts, where multilingualism is now the norm and not the exception (Lasagabaster, 2015; Lanza & Wei, 2016; Kubanyiova & Crookes, 2016; Gorter, 2021; Leung & Valdés, 2019).