Students, Teachers and Management Teams in Bilingual Programmes: Shared Perceptions and Areas for Improvement

Abstract

This paper explores the shared beliefs and perceptions of students and teachers in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) programmes. Unlike in most studies, this research considers the perspectives of all categories of teachers involved when implementing CLIL, including the members of the management teams, along with CLIL programme coordinators, CLIL teachers and English teachers. A total of 114 participants from two state secondary schools located in two provinces of Castilla-La Mancha took part in the study. The instruments used for data collection were Likert type questionnaires containing between 21 and 59 questions that were supplemented with open-ended questions and interviews. Results showed various sources of tension among stakeholders, shared lay theories about bilingualism such as idealization of the native language assistant, and revealed some shortcomings in the implementation of the bilingual programmes for issues such as coordination and shortage of resources.

Keywords

• clil
• bilingual programmes
• shared beliefs
• teachers
• students
• secondary education