Abstract
The diversity that we find in our educational classrooms today makes it necessary to implement inclusive methodologies that encompass all students equally, regardless of their cognitive, economic, social, or cultural situation. For this reason, the aim of this chapter will be to analyse the measures of attention to diversity contemplated in the bilingual programmes in early childhood and primary education. The authors will propose a qualitative research methodology in which they will analyse the official documents of the educational centres in the province of Granada. They will review all the educational documentation in the 104 bilingual early childhood and primary schools existing in the province of Granada to find out the measures that are most frequently proposed. The main conclusion they have reached after carrying out this exhaustive research is that there is still a serious lack of effective educational measures to respond to the difficulties of pupils in early childhood and primary education in bilingual schools.
TopIntroduction
The changes that have taken place in recent years at social, economic, cultural, and technological levels bring with them a demand for new skills that education systems must meet. The promotion of a certain level of communicative competence in a second language, currently carried out in Europe mainly through bilingual education programmes is nowadays one of the main social demands (Beacco & Byram, 2017). However, these changes must be compatible with the principles of inclusive education that promotes the participation of all students based on a positive recognition of diversity, facilitating the presence, participation and learning of each student.
These constant changes that society is facing must be translated into new educational challenges that are important to address if we are to offer quality education that is in line with the new social demands. In this sense, and in accordance with two key elements of today’s society, diversity and multilingualism, the education system is faced with the need to offer inclusive teaching (Rodríguez et al., 2013). This in turn provides students with the necessary skills to enable them to acquire a certain degree of communicative competence in more than one language.
In this context, the aim of this research is to analyse the measures of attention to diversity that are contemplated in the bilingual programmes of Early Childhood and Primary schools in the city of Granada by consulting the official documents available on their websites: the School Educational Project (PEC), the Annual General Programming (PGA) and the Bilingual Project (BP). We have decided to consult these documents since the current regulations specify the obligation of schools to include the relevant information reflecting the most important aspects of their internal organisation and functioning. This includes the available resources or current educational projects and the approach of their bilingual programmes (Gómez Hurtado & García Prieto, 2018). This analysis will enable us to make an initial assessment of the degree of inclusion in the documentation reviewed.
Our analysis aims to contribute to the debate in the educational community as to whether bilingual education approaches are, by their very nature, elitist or, on the contrary, an inclusive educational practice (Madrid & Pérez-Cañado, 2018; Pérez-Cañado, 2019). In the following sections, we will define inclusion as an educational principle, mention some of the main European policies for language teaching and analyse the different studies carried out in Spain on inclusion and bilingual programmes.
Under this premise, in this chapter we focus on the convergence of inclusion and bilingual education based on an analysis of the measures of attention to diversity that schools propose to guarantee equal opportunities in the operation of their bilingual programmes at the Early Childhood and Primary Education stage.
Existing research in Spain on the inclusion of students in bilingual programmes deals with the subject in a tangential way, as one of the aspects to be considered within the framework of broader studies. This fact has led us to devote this chapter entirely to evaluating the functioning of bilingual programmes from an inclusive approach.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Bilingual Education: Bilingual education is a term that refers to the teaching of academic content in two languages, in a native and second language.
Annual General Programming (PGA): The PGA, the annual general programming, is a document prepared by the Management Team, with the participation of the entire centre that summarizes the schedule of actions that will be carried out in a school year.
Primary Education: Primary Education, also called elementary education, ranges from first to sixth grade (6-12 years). Primary education provides students with a basic understanding of various subjects as well as the skills they will use throughout their lives.
Attention to Diversity: We can understand attention to diversity as a set of actions aimed at students with special educational needs. These actions are aimed at encouraging a personalised attention to facilitate the accomplishment of the basic competences and the educational aims.
Inclusion: Inclusion refers to how diversity is leveraged to create a fair, equitable, healthy, and high-performing education where all individuals are respected, feel engaged and motivated.
Early Childhood Education: Early Childhood Education, also known as nursery education, is a branch of education theory that relates to the teaching of children (formally and informally) from birth up to the age of six.
School Educational Project (PEC): The School Educational Project is a collaborative process, frequently involving different teacher and educational staff, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim of learning.
Bilingual Project (BP): It involves education in a child’s native language to ensure that students do not fall behind in content areas like math, science, and social studies while they are learning English.