A Comparative Analysis of Teachers’ Perceptions of Bilingual Programmes in Primary and Secondary Education

Abstract

The aim of this article is to report on a contrastive analysis between the perceptions of primary and secondary school teachers participating in bilingual programmes. The analysis focuses on three key dimensions of their educational practice: training, available teaching resources and the organization of a bilingual school. To this end, we applied a non-experimental research design using questionnaire studies. The instrument employed was an adaptation of a questionnaire, which was completed by 120 in-service teachers equally divided between these two educational stages. Our data confirm that, although communicative competence in English is higher in secondary teachers, primary teachers have a broader didactic training and are more experienced in bilingual programmes. Both groups agree on considering international links as the most valuable investment, on their lack of enthusiasm towards published CLIL materials and on the importance of providing opportunities to further their training. Statistically significant differences were obtained in aspects such as the importance given to subject content knowledge, their training priorities or the need to be provided with additional teachers. In general terms, primary teachers show a greater methodological awareness with a teaching approach which is closer to CLIL practice, whereas secondary teachers are more concerned with the aspects related to the teaching of subject contents in English.