Plurilingual education

Abstract

Abstract The emergence of bilingual education in the Spanish educational landscape has spawned the implementation of a great deal of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs. The need to raise the citizens’ proficiency of foreign languages is imperative so as to embrace the new European mandates in linguistic matter. Each region has implemented its own programs based on the linguistic reality and convictions surrounding it. In fact, the great number of research studies carried out thus far bears witness to the ever-increasing attention that this new form of education awakens in the scientific community. However, as far as the region of Valencia is concerned, despite it being a bilingual region with a long-standing tradition in the implementation of bilingual programs, we know little about the effects of such programs. The only thing that can be ascertained to date is that the road to plurilingual education has been a bumpy one due to the continuous changes in law that plurilingual education has undergone. With this in mind, this article carries out an analysis of the Valencian plurilingual system from the viewpoint of in-service teachers with a special focus on English. The results of this study are thus expected to shed some light on how the plurilingual project is playing out and to push forward the plurilingual agenda of the region.