CLIL in pre-primary education: the views of in-service and pre-service teachers

Abstract

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has rapidly gained ground in schools within the latest decades. Consequently, interest in analysing stakeholders’ perceptions and needs has increased. This article has a twofold aim: (1) to analyse pre-primary teachers’ CLIL knowledge, (2) to identify the expected benefits, challenges, and perceived needs that CLIL implementation in pre-primary may entail for themselves, and for their students. To do so, 129 pre-primary teachers (N=76 in-service, N=53 pre-service) responded an online survey. Answers were coded with Atlas.ti, visualisations were created with R. Results showed that most in-service teachers know what CLIL is, while pre-service teachers are rather unfamiliar with it. Teachers have positive expectations regarding the potential CLIL benefits for students and teachers. However, most do not feel ready to implement it in pre-primary, because of the lack of teacher training programmes (on methodology and FL), and the scarcity of resources (e.g., guidelines, materials, stakeholders’ support).