The Human Factor in Primary Bilingual Programs: The Management Teams’ Perspective

Abstract

In Spain, the interest in bilingual education has led to the implementation of bilingual programs in a large number of schools. Our study uses descriptive research to analyse the perceptions of school management teams regarding the impact of hu-man resources on the design, implementation and supervision of bilingual programs in primary schools within the autonomous community of Castile and Leon. To this end, the answers provided by 70 participants to an ‘ad hoc’ questionnaire were subject to scrutiny. Besides the socio-demographic characteristics of the sample, four dimensions were thoroughly studied: organizational resources (including the design and supervision of the bilingual project as well as the degree of familiarity with and the acceptance of the project), human resources (that is, the number of specialist teachers, teachers with L2 ac-creditation, and language assistants available), teacher profiles (describing turnover rate, L2 level, and participation in CPD courses) and management teams profiles (providing information on training in bilingual education and on access to CPD courses and on re-sources for the evaluation of the program). The analysis of the research data is conclus-ive in identifying the training of management teams and the turnover rate of specialists as key to the success of school bilingual programs.