The impact of the mandatory nature of bilingual programmes on the attitudes and perceptions regarding bilingual education among secondary education content subject teachers

Abstract

The different legislative developments of the Spanish Autonomous Communities in relation to bilingual education in compulsory secondary education allow schools in various territories to offer bilingual education on a voluntary basis. However, in others all students enrolled in a particular school are forced into this type of education. The aim of this work was to investigate secondary school teachers’ attitudes, self-efficacy and perceptions about students’ achievements, establishing a comparison between teachers from schools where bilingual education is compulsory and teachers who work in schools where students can choose whether to join the bilingual programme or not. To this aim, an ex-post-facto research design was used. Data have been collected using different questionnaires designed to measure the constructs involved in the research. To answer the research questions, psychometric analyses were carried out to ensure the validity and reliability of the instruments as well as descriptive analyses, mean differences analyses, and a binary logistic regression. The results show an advantage in the perceptions of teachers in schools where bilingual education is not compulsory for all students. Teachers in these schools show more positive attitudes towards this type of teaching, especially in instrumental attitudes, greater self-efficacy and better perceptions of student results and their involvement in the classroom. In view of these results, it would be convenient for the educational administrations to open a debate with teachers on the issue of bilingual education being obligatory for all students.

Keywords: secondary education, bilingual education, teachers’ perceptions, obligatoriness, attitudes, self-efficacy