CLIL and elitism: myth or reality?

ABSTRACT

This article aims to shed light on the question of elitism in CLIL by exploring empirical evidence taken from a large-scale longitudinal investigation based in Spain. To this end, it reports on a quantitative study into the effects of CLIL programmes on the English language attainment of primary and secondary education students in monolingual contexts. The study uses a sample of 2024 students from twelve monolingual provinces in Spain; has guaranteed the homogeneity of bilingual and non-bilingual groups; and has factored in several intervening variables. It approaches the topic from a three-pronged perspective: by determining whether the most motivated, intelligent, and linguistically proficient students are in fact found in CLIL groups; by analysing the possible differential effect of socio-economic variables on L2 attainment; and by examining whether CLIL has the potential to work even in disadvantaged contexts. The results suggest that, while certain variables impact on language education in both CLIL and non-CLIL settings, others do not have such a substantial effect in CLIL scenarios as in non-bilingual settings. Thus the broader take-away is that commonly harboured beliefs vis-à-vis the elitism of bilingual programmes need to be re-examined and a possible future research agenda is suggested to continue advancing in this area.

KEYWORDS:

• CLIL
• elitism
• setting
• socio-economic status
• type of school

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Charter schools are partly state-financed and normally have a religious orientation.

2 Details of the MON-CLIL project can be found at http://monclil.com/index.

3 Although this study reports on the results of the first testing phase, the broader project of which it is part included a post-testing phase with the 4th year of Compulsory Secondary Education students, who sat a second round of English language tests in order to determine whether the effects of CLIL persisted or had petered out six months after the discontinuation of CLIL programmes, when these students were in first grade of Baccalaureate (aged 17).

4 Certain schools were also open to our administration of English pre-tests, and these grades were also used for homogenisation (cf. Pérez Cañado and Lancaster (2017) for an instance of a school where English pre-tests were administered).

5 The ‘Use of English’ tests followed a similar format to that used in Cambridge First Certificate and Advanced English examinations, testing knowledge of grammar and lexis in context.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant number FFI2012-32221], and the Junta de Andalucía [grant number P12-HUM-23480].