CLIL Teacher’s Initial Education in the Spotlight. Future Teachers’ Perceptions and Proposals

Abstract

Currently, the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach and the bilingual teacher profile are becoming increasingly relevant. The European Union promotes the teaching of foreign and second languages through this approach, which demands adequate university training for successful implementation. However, in the Spanish university system, there are no common guidelines for this training, as regional governments intervene in the design of educational offerings, resulting in diversity across universities. This is an exploratory qualitative study, which describes the educational offerings in bilingual education in early childhood and primary education degrees at a public Spanish university and analyses the initial CLIL training that student receive through their testimonies. The results indicate an insufficient educational offer in bilingual education, ­supported by students’ testimonies, who demand more specific training before starting their professional ­careers. They propose improvements such as changes in the curriculum and the transversal integration of the CLIL approach in subjects. Despite its limitations, this study provides valuable evidence for the improvement of initial teacher education in bilingual and CLIL contexts and is of particular relevance to teacher educators, curriculum design teams, and institutional and policy stakeholders involved in the design and evaluation of initial teacher education programmes in these contexts.