Promoting interculture through content and competences within bilingual education: teachers in action

ABSTRACT

Content and Language Integrated Learning incorporates among its main aims the development of intercultural awareness and understanding. Nowadays, it is imperative to prepare students to become active citizens in globalised societies. The principal objectives of this study are to examine how curricular competences impact content planning and which factors influence the way teachers plan content and competences in order to enhance ‘interculture’ through this approach in Primary Education. An open-question questionnaire was used to analyse the opinions of 59 Primary Education CLIL teachers who were working in private and semi-private schools in Cordoba (Spain) during the 2015/2016 academic year. The results show that several curricular competences influenced the selection of content. Moreover, there were significant differences in competences relating to gender, qualification degree, subject and textbook. Content was also influenced by the same variables except for qualification degree. Outcomes highlight the influence of competences on content planning when teachers aim to promote intercultural knowledge and sensitivity among students. This study also suggests that bilingual teacher training needs reinforcement.

KEYWORDS:

• CLIL
• contents
• interculturalism
• skills
• teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Royal Decree 126/2014, of the 1st of March, in which the Primary Education Curriculum is defined: https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2014/03/01/pdfs/BOE-A-2014-2222.pdf.

2. GzLM are applied for response variables that have error distribution models other than a normal distribution. The GLM generalises linear regression by allowing the linear model to be related to the response variable via a link function and by allowing the magnitude of the variance of each measurement to be a function of its predicted value.

3. It is used to compare groups of objects and test the null hypothesis that the centroids and dispersion of the groups as defined by measure space are equivalent for all groups.

4. This analysis gives the percentage of similarity and dissimilarity of factors, between levels of the factors and for specific levels of the factors. Then it gives which variables in dataset explain the similarities or dissimilarity: the percentage of contribution of your variables (Contrib. %) that explain this similarity.

5. The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) was launched along with Bologna Process’s decade anniversary in 2010.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elisa Pérez Gracia

Elisa Pérez Gracia holds a PhD in Languages and Cultures. She works as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Córdoba. Her main research interests are initial teacher training, teachers’ professional identity, intercultural and inclusive education, and bilingual education. She has taken part in a wide range of international conferences and she participates in diverse international research projects. She is a member of the Research Group SEJ-551 which main interests are interculturalism, plurilingualism, gender and teacher training.

Rocío Serrano Rodríguez

Rocío Serrano Rodríguez is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Córdoba. She teaches at the degrees of Primary Education and Early Years Education. Her research interests are initial teacher training, competences development and teacher training needs. She takes part in several research projects regarding these issues. She is a member of the Research Group SEJ-551. She is the president of RIPRO (An Iberoamerican network of research and innovation for the teaching profession).

Antonio J. Carpio

Antonio J. Carpio belongs to the department of Zoology of the University of Córdoba. He received his PhD degree from University of Cordoba in 2017. His dissertation research involves environmental psychology and environmental education, including issues related to management and conservation. He has worked as a teacher in Ecuador and Sweden, participating in different conservation projects.