Initial Teacher Education for CLIL at Primary Education Level in Madrid: Key Issues and Challenges

Resumen

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs have become increasingly popular in Spain, following the European Union language policy. In the Madrid region, the number of bilingual schools has considerably increased in the last decade. However, despite the wide implementation of these programs, there still exists the need for both Pre-service and In-service Teacher Education for CLIL. This is a real challenge, since the number of credit hours designated to Language Teacher Education in the present Foreign Language Degree has been significantly reduced, following the Bologna Declaration (1999). Hopefully, the recent trend toward implementing English-medium courses at Schools of Higher Education and other European initiatives may provide the opportunity for complementing future teacher development. In this chapter, we aim to ascertain whether the CLIL approach provides complementary foreign language development for prospective teachers, from the perspective provided by two teaching innovation projects that address the issues of interdisciplinary teaching/learning in Englishmedium subjects and the Erasmus+ International Practicum being carried out at the School of Education, Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). The results of both projects seem to indicate that participants benefit from and appreciate these holistic approaches in achieving the language skills and methodology necessary for the teaching profession.