Publications

Mainstreaming CLIL? The Galician case

Book Title
Editors
C. Tremblay & J.C. Beacco
Year
2017-12-00
Pages
-
DOI
Publisher
L'Observatoire Européen du Plurilinguisme
Links

Over the past years, the Galician Educational Department has been trying to find the answer to how to harmonise a language policy based on protection and preservation of Galician with the inclusion of other languages in the curriculum, in line with European guidelines on plurilingualism. In June 2010, a decree on Plurilingualism (Decree 79/2010) was published by the Educational Department, officially bringing an additional or foreign language as vehicular into public education (mainstreaming CLIL), setting out that one third of subjects could be taught in a foreign or additional language with the two remaining thirds taught in Galician and Castilian. The decree has aroused a lot of controversy due to extensive belief that the Galician language is going to play a minor role in the educational system and that teachers are not ready for such a change. All in all, this new provision has resulted in the existence of two types of CLIL programmes: experimental CLIL, in which students enrol voluntarily; and mainstream CLIL, compulsory for all students in the participating school. With this context in mind, the main objective of this research paper is to describe the situation as well as to try to shed light on the possible consequences of mainstreaming CLIL. We will analyse the results elicited from a research study dealing with teachers’ opinions and students’ results and comparing experimental and mainstream CLIL.