Attention to Diversity in Primary Education Bilingual Programs: a study on the degree of inclusion of special needs students (EBYAD)

With the continuous changes that society faces, there is a need to create and meet new educational goals that offer quality education adapted to current societal demands. In this sense, and in tandem with two key elements of today’s society, diversity and multilingualism, our education system is confronted with the need to offer inclusive education that at the same time provides students with the necessary skills to acquire a certain degree of communicative competence in more than one language. European policies on language teaching have led to the implementation of bilingual programs, and Spain has become one of the leading European countries in this area. However, the generalization of these types of programs has not gone without difficulties; attention to diversity in the bilingual classroom being one of these main struggles (Madrid & Pérez Cañado, 2018).

Through this project, we intend to achieve two main goals: 1) To evaluate the degree of inclusion in the bilingual programs of primary education centers in Castile and Leon. 2) To contribute to the promotion of inclusive education in bilingual programs of primary education centers through the development of resources and by providing teaching strategies. 

We propose a mixed-research approach with quantitative predominance (Johnson et al., 2007). The research design will be non-experimental-exploratory, and the target population of this project consists of four groups associated with primary education centers in Castile and Leon with bilingual programs: teachers, management teams, students, and families.

In order to collect the desired information, we will use a previously designed questionnaire by several team members (Durán-Martínez, Martín-Pastor, & Martínez-Abad, 2020) and ad hoc questionnaires adapted to each sample group. This quantitative information will be supported by qualitative information from semi-structured interviews with members of management teams and teachers as well as from focus groups for families.

Once the final instruments are attained, and after being applied to the final sample of the study, the teaching practices developed in bilingual programs will be evaluated. In this sense, for the analysis of quantitative information, statistical techniques of a multivariate nature will be applied, mainly with the intention of establishing models that relate teaching practices and inclusion. In terms of qualitative data, a content analysis will be carried out using NVIVO software. Then we will proceed to an analysis of word-frequency and analyze discursive categories established by the surveyed groups.

Based on the information collected and the conclusions drawn from the analyses, we will design, carry out and disseminate a set of educational materials (explanatory videos, teaching documents, and a massive online course), which will be available in open access and will provide teachers and management teams with resources and strategies to help them develop inclusive practices in bilingual programs in primary education.