Participation in bilingual education programs as a key factor to linguistic success: the Spanish case

Abstract

As in other countries, bilingual/multilingual education has become widespread in Spain. However, research either focuses on Spanish programs’ implementation, students’ performance or teacher training, but not on their contribution to graduates’ self-perceived linguistic success (understood as a combination of intercultural competence, international mobility and employability). Therefore, this paper studies whether Spanish bilingual education results in higher self-perceived competences. An instrument examining these three elements is applied, and Facebook Audience Insights is used for sample targeting. Findings prove that Spanish bilingual education graduates have higher self-perceived intercultural competence and international mobility. In terms of gender, women who have participated in Spanish bilingual education show higher self-perceived intercultural competence, whereas men who have studied in these programs consider themselves more interculturally competent and mobile. Conversely, there is no evidence of more positive self-perceived employability than in monolingual education. All in all, participation in a Spanish bilingual program is demonstrated to be an influential factor in self-perceived global linguistic success, employability, and intercultural competence.

Keywords:

• Linguistic success
• bilingual education graduates
• employability
• intercultural competence
• international mobility

Acknowledgements

This paper was supported by Project ‘Facing Bilinguals: Study of Bilingual Education Programmes’ Results through Social Data Analysis’ (Ref. no. EDU2017-84800-R), granted by a competitive call of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Moreover, it was also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education (Resolución de 5 de diciembre de 2017, de la Secretaría de Estado de Educación, Formación Profesional y Universidades, por la que se convocan ayudas para la formación de profesorado universitario, de los Subprogramas de Formación y de Movilidad incluidos en el Programa Estatal de Promoción del Talento y su Empleabilidad, en el marco del Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013–2016).

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors. The authors also declare that they had no access to participants’ personal information/activity on Facebook and that responses were collected on a voluntary and anonymous basis.

Notes

1 Throughout the paper, the term ‘self-perceived’ is used to refer to perceptions made by respondents (i.e. graduates) themselves rather than by other individuals such as friends, colleagues or former teachers.

Additional information

Funding

Spanish Research Agency of the Ministry of Science and Innovation.