Attention to diversity in bilingual education: student and teacher perspectives in Spain

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the outcomes of a study on stakeholder perspectives on catering for diversity in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Spain. It is part of the large-scale SWOT analysis conducted in Europe within the project ‘CLIL for All: Attention to Diversity in Bilingual Education (ADiBE)’. The research has involved the administration of two sets of questionnaires to 926 informants (742 students and 184 teachers) within 15 secondary schools of four provinces. After framing the topic against the backdrop of the project, the paper will expound on the objectives, methodology, variables, and procedure employed in this particular study in Spain. The bulk of the article will outline its main findings in relation to the five main fields of interest which have been canvassed: linguistic aspects, methodology and types of groupings, materials and resources, assessment, and teacher coordination and development. Across-group comparisons will be carried out to determine whether there are statistically significant differences between both cohorts. A diagnosis of where we currently stand in Spain in the process of catering for diversity in CLIL will be provided in light of these results and a future CLIL agenda will be carved out on the basis of these findings.

KEYWORDS:

• CLIL
• attention to diversity
• Spain
• bilingual education
• student perspective
• teacher perspective

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Further information about this project can be found at https://adibeproject.com/.

2 According to Madrid Fernández and Pérez Cañado (2018, 243–244), further information about these issues can be found in Julius and Madrid Fernández (2017); Anghel, Cabrales, and Carro (2016), Fernández-Sanjurjo, Fernández-Costales and Arias Blanco (published online in 2017 and printed in 2019) and Rascón Moreno and Bretones Callejas (2018); Alejo and Piquer-Píriz (2016); and Madrid Fernández and Barrios Espinosa (2018), respectively.

3 Furthermore, Pérez Cañado (2020) questions the validity of some of the beliefs regarding elitism, drawing the conclusion that ‘the charge of elitism certainly needs to be questioned’ (op.cit.: 15). This scholar (2021) has done so, ‘dismantling the assumptions put forward by Bruton (2019) as regards egalitarianism […]’, among other beliefs.

4 Nevertheless, the research conducted by scholars such as Fernández-Sanjurjo, Fernández-Costales, and Arias Blanco (2019, 661) concludes that ‘participants with lower socio-economic status obtain lower scores than those coming from more privileged backgrounds’.

5 Cf. Madrid Fernández and Pérez Cañado (2018, 244) for a taxonomy of the types of special needs that should be accounted for in the CLIL classroom.

6 In turn, Julius and Madrid Fernández (2017) focus on Spanish university programs.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union under Grant 2018-1-ES01-KA201-050356; the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades under Grant RTI2018-093390-B-I00; and the Junta de Andalucía under Grants 1263559 and P18-RT-1513.

Notes on contributors

Antonio Vicente Casas Pedrosa

Dr Antonio Vicente Casas Pedrosa is Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology of the University of Jaén, Spain. His research interests are in descriptive English linguistics (including English morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics), Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), and new technologies in language teaching.

Diego Rascón Moreno

Dr Diego Rascón Moreno is Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology of the University of Jaén, Spain. His research interests are in Applied Linguistics, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), values education, and new trends in language teaching.