Heritage Language Education in Greece and Cyprus

Amid the growing trend of preserving ethnic languages within diverse ethnolinguistic communities in Greece and Cyprus, our understanding of heritage language education in these countries remains limited. The chapters in this collection undertake a thoughtful exploration of language education in the world's two majority-Greek-speaking contexts. The volume brings together empirical studies that exhibit the array of heritage language education options available in Greece and Cyprus today, including community/complementary schools operating on weekends or after regular school hours, providing language and culture classes in a range of languages (e.g., Albanian, Czech, Armenian, Russian), day schools (such as Italian and Hebrew schools), and 'family language schools' developed within the UNICEF framework. Collectively, these chapters establish a novel evidence base describing the diversity of the heritage language education landscape, which could act as a catalyst for further research and potentially drive change in both policy and practice. Importantly, the volume renders heritage language education initiatives in Greece and Cyprus visible - mainly to scholars, but potentially also to practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders in this evolving social, educational, and linguistic domain.