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Language and Education

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Management teams and teaching staff: do they share the same beliefs about obligatory CLIL programmes and the use of the L1? Aintzane Doiz & David Lasagabaster To cite this article: Aintzane Doiz & David Lasagabaster (2017): Management teams and teaching staff: do they share the same beliefs about obligatory CLIL programmes and the use of the L1?, Language and Education To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2017.1290102

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Date: 20 February 2017, At: 09:46

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2017.1290102

Management teams and teaching staff: do they share the same beliefs about obligatory CLIL programmes and the use of the L1? Aintzane Doiz and David Lasagabaster English Studies Department, Faculty of Arts, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

ABSTRACT

ARTICLE HISTORY

The popularity of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) continues to spread in education systems around the world. However, and despite the large number of studies recently published, we know little about how CLIL teachers and management teams feel regarding CLIL. In this paper, we analyse two contentious matters that require further analysis: (i) whether CLIL should be obligatory or optional for the students, and (ii) methodological issues such as the use of the students’ linguistic repertoire. This study spans three years and examines the opinions and beliefs of CLIL teachers and management teams from three public schools located in the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain) through 24 discussion groups. The results reveal that, while the schools face similar problems in implementing CLIL (such as students’ heterogeneity and the low level of English among some of them), the school management teams deal with these challenges differently and act on a trial and error basis. Although the management teams’ decisions may not always be in line with their teaching staff’s views, they do eventually manage to ﬁnd some common ground.

Received 26 September 2016 Accepted 24 January 2017 KEYWORDS

CLIL; teachers; management teams; obligatory; use of L1

Introduction Both European and local policy makers, many educators, parents and a large number of researchers cherish hopes that CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) will help to improve foreign language learning and to boost multilingualism without any detrimental effect to content learning outcomes (Lasagabaster and Doiz 2016; P erez-Vidal 2013). This positive stance is unmistakably proven by the ample support given to CLIL by European and national institutions, as well as by the numerous research projects on variegated aspects of this approach undertaken in recent times. CLIL is regarded as an approach that will help to move from monolingual education systems into bilingual ones, or from bilingual systems into multilingual ones, while working ‘towards a more equitable distribution of linguistic and social capital’ (Coyle 2013, 245). However, shortcomings regarding CLIL programmes have not been fully addressed due to the ‘rather evangelical

CONTACT Aintzane Doiz

aintzane.doiz@ehu.es

A. DOIZ AND D. LASAGABASTER

picture’ that some authors portray, which is why a ‘more focused reading of the advantages and drawbacks of CLIL’ is direly needed (Banegas 2011, 183). In addition, it has to be noted that there is no fixed model available and CLIL programmes vary enormously, not only from country to country, but also between schools in the same city or region. Having said that, it is essential to conduct studies to find out whether the different CLIL stakeholders hold similar belief structures (H€ uttner, Dalton-Puffer and Smit 2013). As Cenoz, Genesee, and Gorter (2014, 256) put it, ‘There is a need for more balanced reflection on both the strengths and the shortcomings or gaps in our understanding of CLIL and its effectiveness in diverse contexts.’ Although in the last two decades CLIL has spawned an enormous amount of studies on the theorization of the approach, recommendations for its implementation and research reviews, hitherto little is known about what some of the stakeholders believe. In her state of the art article, P erez-Ca~ nado (2012) puts forward future research avenues and highlights the need to delve into ‘the main needs and problems stakeholders face in their daily practice’ (330), while longitudinal studies ‘should be given top priority’ (331), a central concern shared by many researchers in the field (Coyle 2013; Dalton-Puffer and Smit 2013; Lasagabaster and Doiz 2015). Although it is very important to listen to the voices of all those involved in CLIL programmes, the literature has focused mainly on students’ beliefs and opinions (Coyle 2013), it has also paid some attention to teachers (Coonan 2007; Dafouz et al. 2007; H€ uttner, Dalton-Puffer, and Smit 2013) and parents (PladevallBallester 2015), but management teams have remained mostly invisible. There is a dearth of research into the needs of CLIL teachers that has led some researchers to analyse this issue, but the paucity of studies is even more remarkable in the case of management teams. In fact, our search in different databases and journals turned out to be fruitless and, to our knowledge, no previous study has tackled management teams’ beliefs. Dalton-Puffer and Smit (2013, 549) posed the tasks that need to be researched in CLIL and underscored the ‘small number of studies into beliefs,’ but in their article they mentioned only students, teachers and parents when referring to stakeholders’ beliefs (548), once again management teams being overlooked. Since CLIL has been ‘adopted as part of a school strategy’ (Roquet and P erez-Vidal 2015, 1) and management teams make many decisions which are crucial for the development of these programmes, we believe that their viewpoints are of the utmost importance. Although high-level language management regulations emanate from European and national governing bodies, the fact is that school ground-level language management relies heavily on the decisions made by particular management teams. They therefore become key players in actually implementing CLIL at grass-roots level. Authors (Pav on et al. 2015) emphasize the need to boost different types of coordination such as those between foreign language teachers and content teachers, between language teachers (L1 and foreign language), and between the different content teachers (i.e. science, history or music), but little mention is made in the literature about whether teachers and school management teams share the same beliefs on CLIL implementation. This is a gap that the present study aims to fill. In this paper we gather information from both the teachers’ and the management teams’ perspective about two contentious matters that require further analysis: (i) whether CLIL should be obligatory or optional for the students, and (ii) methodological issues, such as the use of the students’ linguistic repertoire and the monolingual habitus in the learning of content through a foreign language (Gierlinger 2015; Lin 2015; M endez and

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

Pav on 2012), since the literature ‘has still not much to say about the potential role of L1 in CLIL’ (Lin 2015, 75). Before tackling the study, a brief review of relevant studies on management teams, the obligatory versus optional nature of CLIL, and the use of the L1 is needed. The active and effective collaboration between management teams and teachers represents a cornerstone of the smooth implementation of any school programme, which is why their combined perspective will undoubtedly help to shed light on the implementation of CLIL schemes, as well as to understand ‘how participants in the process feel’ (Pladevall-Ballester 2015, 45). There is no doubt that, for CLIL programmes to be successful, management teams need to strike the right chord with their teaching staff so that the school's language policy guidelines eventually reach the classroom. Since teachers usually claim the need to have more support from their institutions (Doiz, Lasagabaster and Sierra 2013), we believe there is much to be gained by analysing the beliefs and expectations of both school bodies. In this paper management team refers to the typical structure to be found in Spanish secondary education schools, which consists of three teachers: the principal or headmaster, the academic secretary (who takes care of administrative and financial issues and frees the principal from this role) and the head of studies (the teacher who is responsible for academic coordination duties, organization and disciplinary matters, the so-called jefe/a de estudios). Management teams are therefore made up of teachers with a reduced instructional load because of the additional responsibilities they take on. It is also worth noting that their positions are temporary and they return to their teaching position in the same school after the expiration of their mandate (usually a four-year headship). International research shows that teachers’ work is heavily influenced by the leadership provided by school management teams, as their leadership bears not only on the motivation and effectiveness of teachers, but also on the school climate and environment (Pont, Nusche, and Moorman 2008). In addition, management teams play an active role in decision making (OECD 2014) and, since in Spain they have been accorded greater decisionmaking in the last few years than they had enjoyed in the past, they enjoy some autonomy for the management of the school, as it is believed that autonomy engenders a greater sense of ownership among staff and allows schools to experiment and find what works (OECD 2014). The job of the management team encompasses a broad panoply of tasks and responsibilities, the decision on the obligatory or optional nature of CLIL courses being one of them. The optional or compulsory nature of CLIL has become a bone of contention in the literature. This is an issue of the utmost importance, especially due to the fact that one of the main tenets of state education lies in the provision of equal opportunities for all students. However, if CLIL is made optional, a self-selection process will more than likely happen, which will result in only the more gifted students taking advantage of the CLIL experience. Some authors (e.g. Paran 2013) affirm that the positive effects of CLIL are mainly due to the selection of students, as CLIL streams are usually the result of a selfselection process. Rumlich (2016) describes the implementation of CLIL programmes in Germany and refers to the habitual selection of voluntary participants in CLIL groups. This has led to criticism of some studies on the grounds that the positive results obtained are due to this selection process, because CLIL groups are made up of the more motivated and linguistically proficient students. P erez-Ca~ nado (2016), however, claims that selection

A. DOIZ AND D. LASAGABASTER

is not a main feature of many CLIL programmes because they are being applied across the board. The controversy about whether the optional or compulsory nature of CLIL programmes affects results is recurrent in the literature (Paran 2013; P erez-Ca~ nado 2016; Rumlich 2016), but little is known about what teachers and management teams actually believe about this matter, that is, whether CLIL should be open to all students or not, and whether each school's characteristics should be considered when it comes to making CLIL optional or compulsory. Last but not least, there is a need to delve into whether teachers and management teams share the same beliefs about the use of students’ L1 in CLIL settings, an issue that is also fraught with controversy due to the bad reputation that code switching has suffered from since the advent of the communicative approach (Gierlinger 2015). Studies carried out in CLIL classes in Spain (Lasagabaster 2017; M endez and Pav on 2012) reveal that teachers employ the L1 to help students understand complex ideas and notions, but also that this practice is neither systematic nor based on guidelines. In the Austrian context, however, Gierlinger (2014, 360) concludes that ‘code switching by teachers has a clear pedagogical orientation, is not carried out haphazardly nor unprincipled and neither does it primarily operate as an emergency tool’. The differences observed in the Spanish and the Austrian contexts indicate that more research is clearly needed in this ﬁeld. Similarly, assessment is a very good case in point when it comes to teachers’ diversity of opinions (Gablasova 2014), as some teachers consider that under no circumstances should students’ L1 be used in assessment tasks, whereas others are much more ﬂexible and believe that it should be allowed. With this diversity of opinions in mind, the comparison of teachers’ and management teams’ beliefs may help to shed some light on this controversial issue.

The study: participants, instrument and procedure The study includes CLIL teachers and management teams of three public schools in the cities of Vitoria-Gasteiz and Bilbao located in the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain), an officially bilingual community where Basque and Spanish are the minority and majority languages, respectively. In order to maintain the anonymity of the schools, their original names have been replaced by the first letters of the alphabet. The three schools offered CLIL programmes in the first year of secondary education but differed in the number of years CLIL had been applied. CLIL schemes had been running at schools A and B for 15 and 12 years, respectively, while it had been a feature at school C for just three years, which coincided with the three years (from 2013 to 2015) under scrutiny in this study. The teachers’ level of English competence was B2 (school C), B2 or C1 (school B) and C1 (school A) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The three schools were linguistic model D, in which all classes are conducted in Basque with the exception of the Spanish language and literature subject, the English language subject and the two CLIL courses which varied in each school and sometimes each year (arts and crafts, music, physical education, drama and citizenship being the school subjects taught in English). The majority of the students’ mother tongue was Spanish, Basque being their L2. Although the students had taken classes of English as a foreign language (EFL) in primary school, they had never taken any CLIL classes before their first year of secondary education. Students had four weekly sessions of CLIL subjects in schools A and B, and three weekly sessions in school C, apart from the three EFL sessions taught in all

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

Table 1. The composition of the discussion groups and information about the participants.

School A School B School C

2013 1 (F, 23) 2 (F, 22) 3 (F, 15) 7 (F, 15) 8 (F, 23) 9 (F, 23) 15 (M, 11) 16 (F, 3)

CLIL teachers 2014 1 2 4 (M, 11) 10 (F, 16) 11 (M, 15) 17 (M) 18 (M, 6)

Management teams 2014 3 (F, 37) 4 (M, 34)

2015 5 (F, 26) 6 (F, 24)

2013 1 (F, 27) 2 (M, 27)

2015 3 5 (F, 37)

12 (M, 7) 13 (F, 6) 14 (M, 10) 19 (M, 7) 20 (M, 7)

6 (F, 23) 7 (F, 33)

8 (F, 27) 9 (F, 29)

8 9

10 (F, 23) 11 (M, 32) 12 (F, 28)

11 12

*F and the M stand for female and male, respectively, and the numbers that follow for the years of teaching experience of the participants.

schools. School A was attended by middle class students, while schools B and C were located in low middle class neighbourhoods. During the three years of duration of our study student participation in the CLIL programme was obligatory in schools B and C, and it was optional in school A. We would like to point out that, by including two schools (schools B and C) in which CLIL students are not selected and belong to the low middle class, we intend to consider CLIL experiences ‘in mixed-ability settings and preserve the full heterogeneity of students instead of pre-selecting high-achievers at an early stage’ (K€ uppers and Trautmann 2013, 294). In addition, this will give us the possibility of comparing schools B and C with school A, where a self-selection process is put into practice. A total of 24 discussion groups (12 with the CLIL teachers and 12 with the management teams of the aforementioned schools) were organized in June of three consecutive years: 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2013 the participating teachers were teaching CLIL courses in the first year of secondary education, in 2014 in the second year and in 2015 in the third year, in an attempt to have a broader perspective of teachers’ beliefs and practices over three academic schools years. Table 1 reflects the composition of the discussion groups, whose participants will be referred to with numbers. Due to the shortage of permanent CLIL teachers in the schools and the change of school subjects and academic course from one year to the next, most of the teachers in our discussion groups differed. Hence, the teachers involved in 2013 were different from those involved in 2014 and 2015; in fact, only teachers 1 and 2 participated in the study in two consecutive years (see Table 1). As could be expected, the management teams in our schools underwent fewer changes, because their mandate usually lasts four years. A total of 20 CLIL teachers, 11 of whom were female and 9 male, and 12 management team members (9 female, 3 male) took part in the discussion groups. The teachers had an average of 10 years of teaching experience although an individualized look at the data reveals some differences among the teachers: 4 teachers had over 20 years of teaching experience, 6 teachers over 10 years and 2 teachers below 10 years (one teacher did not respond to the question regarding the years of teaching experience). The members of the management teams averaged approximately 29 years of teaching experience. In particular five of them had over 30 years of experience and the remaining 7 over 20 years. The discussion groups, which were held in the participants’ schools, were taperecorded and transcribed. The transcriptions amounted to a total word count of 165,427.

A. DOIZ AND D. LASAGABASTER

The discussion groups were based on a series of questions that dealt with background information about the participants, motivation and methodological issues, among other issues. They were conducted by one of the authors at a time. For the purposes of the current study, we focused on the participants’ responses regarding (i) the advisability of obligatory CLIL for all students and (ii) the CLIL teachers’ use of the L1 and the L2 and their perspectives about the monolingual/multilingual habitus in CLIL programmes. First, the two authors of this paper analysed the transcripts of the recordings and identiﬁed the ideas and concepts in the participants’ narratives which revealed clear standpoints on the issues that were the focus of the current study. Next, they compared their notes and reached a consensus regarding the interpretation of the participants’ standpoints, increasing the validity of the whole process of interpretation of the data. Finally, they chose the participants’ quotes that best represented the various stances on the two main issues analysed in this study. The inclusion of qualitative data such as this provides the researcher with a much more detailed picture about the data than a mathematical/statistical procedure (Baralt 2012), and it allows researchers to pinpoint ‘contradictory trends as well as distinctions of opinions within the groups of stakeholders ‘interviewed’ (H€ uttner, DaltonPuffer and Smit 2013, 268).

Results The advisability of obligatory CLIL The management teams’ position The issue regarding the advisability of obligatory CLIL is complex, as reﬂected by the adoption of different points of view in the schools where CLIL is implemented all over Europe. The three schools in our study attest to the complexity of the issue as they featured both obligatory and optional models of CLIL, as well as shifts in their stance with the passing of time (see Table 2). When CLIL was ﬁrst introduced before the time in which this study took place, schools A and B made CLIL optional, whereas school C, the school with the least experience, chose obligatory CLIL for all its students. However, when the present study took place school B had already changed from optional to obligatory CLIL and school C decided to switch from an obligatory to an optional model for the academic year 2015/16 by the end of the study.. School A did not alter its initial position although it made some adjustments as we will discuss below. Three were the main issues that management teams took into account in their decision to make CLIL obligatory or not: (i) the students’ English competence, (ii) the students’ – particularly the weaker students’ – chances of academic success in CLIL and (iii) how to deal with student heterogeneity and its consequences for the organization of students into groups. The initial main argument put forward by the school C management team to go for obligatory CLIL was ‘the responsibility of public schools to guarantee that all students Table 2. The evolution of the implementation of CLIL. School A School B School C

Beginning of the programme During our study (2013–2015) After our study (academic year: 2015/2016) Optional Optional Optional Optional Obligatory Obligatory Obligatory Obligatory Optional

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

have access to the programme’ (management team member 12, school C, 2014), despite their awareness that the diversity in the students’ English competence could be an important obstacle to overcome. While sharing school C's view regarding the inclusive role of public schools, school A's and school B's management teams argued that not every student is ready to take classes in English and decided to restrict the possibility to the students who had passed an English competence test when their CLIL venture first started before our study. However, at the onset of the present study, the English competence test had been eliminated in schools A and B, opening the programme to all the students, albeit in different ways. In school A the parents met the English teacher and the CLIL teachers to discuss their children's skills in English and were advised on the most suitable option for them. The final decision regarding their children's participation in the programme was always left to the parents. School B, underwent a more profound change since it shifted from optional to obligatory CLIL for all the students, regardless of the students’ English ability. This change was motivated by three main reasons, namely, the widening academic gap between the CLIL and the non-CLIL groups (management team member 7, 2014), the increase in disciplinary problems in the latter (management team member 8, 2015), and the responsibility to provide equal opportunities for advancement in English proficiency for the less privileged students (management team member 8, 2014), as illustrated in the following quotes: The CLIL groups were very homogeneous; frequently these students were raised in very supportive families who could afford extra-curricular English classes, and the students were very good. However, the students in non-CLIL groups were frequently not that interested in English, or school for that matter, and it was impossible to motivate them, there was no one in the group to take the lead the way good students usually do. There was no one to make the group progress. (management team member 7, school B, 2014) We could see that the non-CLIL students had an attitude problem. We had disciplinary problems and very problematic students were in the same classes all the time. […] It was very good for the ‘elite’ group but for the rest of the students it was a disaster. (management team member 8, school B, 2015) If it weren't for the CLIL programme, the less privileged students would not have the opportunity to improve their English at the same pace as their more privileged peers who have access to extra-curricular English classes. They would not be offered the possibility of catching up with the other students and would most likely lag behind in English. (management team member 8, school B, 2014)

Differences in the academic performance and development between the CLIL students and the non-CLIL students were also present and noteworthy in school A, where CLIL is optional. Furthermore, the existence of differences between the better students and the lesser accomplished students were also found within the CLIL groups after the English competence test was eliminated and the programme was offered to all the students. However, unlike in school B, the management teams in school A maintained their decision to have non-obligatory CLIL, a decision which was not shared by many of the non-CLIL teachers who showed concern for the non-CLIL groups and believed, and even demanded, that all students should be mixed. The management teams claimed that, while separating the CLIL and the non-CLIL groups was not ideal, mixing all the students was unfeasible from an organizational standpoint and due to the shortage of CLIL teachers. Nevertheless, by the end of our study in June 2015 the CLIL groups (5 groups) outnumbered the nonCLIL groups (2 groups).

A. DOIZ AND D. LASAGABASTER

Beyond the organizational concerns and the aforementioned external circumstances underlying school A and school B's decisions on the issue of obligatory vs. non-obligatory CLIL, there were two different concerns: the need to deal with the weaker students and the vital role of vehicular languages in the students’ personal and academic development. The management team in school A believed that: Everybody who wishes to participate in the programme may do so, but not every student is capable of taking classes in English. We cannot establish a system where some students are in an inferior condition from the very beginning of their academic life due to their low competence in English. Vehicular languages (e.g. English) must facilitate the students’ personal development, they should not be an obstacle or make it harder for the students. We let the parents decide after they have been informed by our teaching staff. (management team member 5, school A, 2015)

Given enough resources, school A management team members proposed alternative solutions for the non-CLIL students, such as having one subject in English which was not academically too demanding (school management team 3, school A, 2014), although this option was still not available at the time when our study took place. By contrast, the management team in School B argued that Research has repeatedly shown that when you separate achievers and underachievers, the former may progress more rapidly, but the latter will get stuck in a hole that becomes deeper and deeper. And once they are in the hole, it is virtually impossible to get them out from there. (management team member 9, school B, 2014)

Moreover, they argued that ‘the separation of the students also had negative consequences for the CLIL students because it caused unsupportive competitive attitudes to surface amongst them and they did not learn important messages for life, such as learning to cooperate’ (management team member 9, school B, 2015). Therefore, they concluded that the best way to help the weaker students was to mix them with the stronger students and to challenge them academically: Some students are stigmatized from the beginning. Those students are not going to make it whether they are in the good or the not-so good group. But there is a high number of students, usually the majority, that may give up because when you lower the level required, the students do not see the need to try as hard, and the less you require from a student, the less they will give. What is more, they will perceive that you don't believe in their capabilities. (management team member 9, school B, 2014)

At the heart of the matter lie the differences in the guiding principles for the organization of students into groups in the CLIL context and the understanding of what constitutes a ‘natural group’. For management teams in school A students fell into two sets of groups. On the one hand, there were the groups which contained the students who had decided to take CLIL, and, on the other hand, there were the groups of students who were not taking CLIL classes. Since the students’ decision to join the CLIL groups was generally based on the advice from the English and the CLIL teachers, although the parents had the ﬁnal word on the matter, the CLIL groups were made up of the students who did well in English, had good linguistic skills and were good students in general. The management team in school B took a different position after a few years of experience with the programme. ‘At the beginning, given our ignorance of the matter - we did not have any experience, we made the CLIL group the natural group’ (management team member 9, school

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

B, 2014). As a result, the CLIL groups were homogenous but, as stated above, this happened to be a disastrous decision for the non-CLIL groups. Consequently, when the present study took place, school B had already adopted a different view of what constituted a natural group: ‘the natural groups are those that are heterogeneous’ (management team member 9, school B, 2014). All the students, good and weak, were mixed in their classes and, consequently, CLIL was for everybody. Management team members at school C firmly believed that CLIL classes should be compulsory when their CLIL programme was launched in 2012/13. ‘We have to fight for obligatory CLIL, although we will have to make changes as we go along’ (management team member 12, school C, 2014). In fact, after three years of experience, ‘reality prevailed’ (management team member 11, school C, 2015) and the CLIL teachers’ experience convinced the management team that the programme should be optional starting in the academic year 2015/16. In particular, they based their decision on the problems derived from students’ diversity, some students’ low level in English and their attitude towards the CLIL classes: ‘they would boycott the CLIL classes, they never understood anything. They did not want [stressed by the speaker] to understand and they demanded the translations into Basque. This put an end to the magic of working in a different language’ (management team member 12, school C, 2015). The students with lower levels of English had given up (management team member 12, school C, 2015). In contrast, the management team believed that under an optional model of CLIL, it would be the management team's responsibility to convince the students that they are capable of taking CLIL classes and that they can join the programme whenever they like. In a nutshell, the present study reveals that there is no consensus among the school management teams that participated in our study on whether CLIL should be obligatory or optional even though they all faced similar difficulties and problems. While management teams in school A believe it should be optional, management teams in schools B and C opted for the obligatory model. However, the decision on the CLIL scheme is not fixed and is subject to changes based on the schools’ own experiences. Thus, in the case of school B they shifted from an optional model to an obligatory model, school C from obligatory to optional, starting in the academic year 2015/16, and school A made some adjustments such as the elimination of the English competence test to open CLIL to more students. The teachers’ position Most of the teachers participating in the discussion groups at a given school shared the same views on the advisability of an obligatory CLIL. When compared with their management teams’ position, the CLIL teachers’ position on the issue displayed some variability. School A teachers agreed with their management, school C teachers did not follow the same line, and school B teachers agreed with their management but had some qualms on the issue. The majority of the teachers in school A agreed with their management teams that CLIL should be optional. They argued that ‘12 year-old students who have just enrolled in our school and are struggling in their studies would probably be doomed to failure’ if CLIL were obligatory (teacher 1, school A, 2014). In addition, they noted that ‘if their attitude [towards the classes in English] were more positive, it would compensate for their low level of competence in English, but these students have it all’ (teacher 1, school A,

A. DOIZ AND D. LASAGABASTER

2014). However, one of the teachers of school A favoured obligatory CLIL, and another stated that she would accept it if the students had an array of subjects to choose from and the use of English was reinforced in society (e.g. using English outside the academic sphere, movies in English and so on) (teacher 6, school A, 2015), two conditions unlikely to be met in their context. Unlike their peers in school A, teachers in school C did not support the model of CLIL adopted by their school management team during the three-year period of our study, namely, obligatory CLIL. ‘Just imagine that your English is not good enough to follow a class in English. You are doomed’ (teacher 20, school C, 2015), ‘you cannot teach in English because there is a big part of the class that is not paying attention’ (teacher 19, school C, 2015). ‘I don't think we should make it obligatory because the students that are really interested get bored and the ones that cannot follow the class in English do not pay attention’ (teacher 18, school C, 2014). Moreover, since not taking CLIL was never an option for the weaker students, the teachers in school C felt the ‘moral obligation’ to help them out. But repetition of the ideas in the students’ other languages (Basque and Spanish) had a number of undesired consequences such as the better students’ getting bored, having less content taught and their getting ‘exhausted’ from having to juggle with the three languages. According to the teachers, ‘if you make CLIL optional, you are entitled to tell your students that they needn't have taken it, that they had a choice. So, when they enrol in CLIL voluntarily, you can take for granted a certain level of English, you can make headway’ (teacher 18, school C, 2014). Teachers in school B agreed with their school management teams’ decision to have obligatory CLIL although they did have some qualms on the issue. On the one hand, they thought that CLIL was good for the students. They stated that once the students get over the ‘initial shock’ of having classes in English in their ﬁrst year, ‘the students perceive classes in English as normal, they have got used to it’ (teacher 13, school B, 2015). ‘It is like the linguistic model D in Basque: their parents’ have chosen that model for their children and nobody questions this decision’ (teacher 10, school B, 2014). On the other hand, some of the teachers expressed some reservations: ‘the idea of making CLIL obligatory is not clear cut’ (teacher 12, school B, 2014), ‘I am not completely comfortable with the notion of making something obligatory, although I think it is good for the students to have classes in English’ (teacher 10, school B, 2014). The teachers believed that implementing CLIL in primary school would prevent some of the problems they face later on in secondary education: ‘they should have classes in English in primary school. Their English would be acceptable by the time they reached secondary school and then I would make it obligatory throughout the students’ whole academic life’ (teacher 15, school B, 2015). In short, teachers tend to agree – although with some reservations in some cases - with their management teams on the CLIL model for their schools. Thus, teachers in school A agreed with their management teams that CLIL should be optional and teachers in school B that it should be obligatory. When there is disagreement between the teachers and the management teams, as in the case of school C, the teachers’ experience has been taken into account by the management teams and has resulted in the decision to change the CLIL scheme for the future (e.g. the academic year 2015/16).Thus, CLIL experience emerges as a key factor in schools’ language policies.

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

The CLIL teachers’ use of the L1 /L2 and their monolingual/multilingual habitus In the dual approach of CLIL whereby both content and language learning take place, immersion in the target language appears to be pivotal for successfully acquiring the target language. Hence, the use of the students’ linguistic repertoire by the teachers and the teachers’ monolingual habitus are two methodological concerns that arise in CLIL contexts. Two ideas stood out from the analysis of the participants’ beliefs and practices gathered in the data. First, teachers and management teams shared common beliefs on these matters. Secondly, years of experience in CLIL and the daunting challenges teachers face during daily practice conditioned and made the participants’ stance more flexible both in their own use of the students’ L1/L2 in the classroom and in the students’ use of their L1/ L2 in the assessment tasks. Practice vs beliefs In general, the schools’ management teams and teachers supported the English-only approach inherently associated with CLIL. This stance was particularly favoured by the participants of school A. Yet, with the exception of management team member 4 (school A, 2014), flexibility in their daily practice seemed to be the key word in this matter as they did not consider the more or less occasional use of the L1/L2 detrimental to the objectives of the CLIL programme (‘the L1/L2 is another resource’ (teacher 5, school A, 2015)). Interestingly though, many teachers and the management teams acknowledged that they did not always show leniency towards the use of the L1/L2, and that years of experience in the programme had led to a change of heart in the matter. ‘I used to be a purist at the beginning, but now I think that the most important thing is for them to understand, and once they have understood, you can go back to using English’ (teacher 9, school B, 2013). Despite their flexibility on the matter, the management team in school C was a bit wary of the introduction of Spanish/Basque and stated that its presence should decrease as students go up the educational ladder to prevent the encouragement of the tendency to use English on ever fewer occasions. Circumstances for the use of the students’ L1/L2 by the teachers The use of Basque, and Spanish to a lesser extent, occurred under very specific circumstances. Primarily it was used when the students had difficulties to grasp an idea or the meaning of an English term. It was also frequently utilized by the teachers when they needed to tell their students off and had to deal with group management issues: ‘I use Basque to complement some explanations, but above all I use it to manage and discipline the group’ (teacher 1, school A, 2014). The management teams and the teachers based their decision to use the L1/L2 on two reasons. Firstly, it provided support to students whose English was not good. In fact, the teachers argued that not using the L1/L2 with these students may even be counterproductive since not understanding an explanation resulted in the students’ ‘disconnecting’ from what was going on in class. Secondly, the use of the L1/L2 was also an efficient shortcut that ensured understanding of the content, the teachers’ main concern: ‘the use of English should not get in the way of content’ (teacher 12, school B, 2014). ‘If you repeat an explanation to a student in English, the student may not be able to think straight, their mind may go blank and then they will never be able to understand because the others will begin

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to tease them’ (teacher 12, school B, 2014). ‘At the end of the day I think that using the L1 is useful given the allotted time in class’ (teacher 10, school B, 2014). According to the teachers, the provision of the translation into the students’ L1 or L2 of concepts/terms learnt in the L3 (English) also contributed to the students’ acquisition of new terminology in these languages. ‘I want the students to learn that word in Basque or in Spanish in addition to the explanation in English’ (teacher 4, school A, 2014). In fact, one of the teachers noted that the instances of cases in which the students could not deduce the meaning of latinates – words resembling, derived from Latin and therefore similar to the Spanish word - found in English was increasing in the recent years because they did not know the Spanish word either (teacher 9, school B, 2013). Finally, the establishment of linguistic comparisons between the L1/L2 and the L3 also helped students develop linguistic awareness and a deeper understanding of the L3: ‘I sometimes translate things into the L1 or the L2 so that the students realize that we say things in a completely different way, and this is something that will help them continue learning English and not give up’ (management team member 12, school C, 2015). The use of the L1/L2 by the students in assessment tasks Of special interest was our participants’ position regarding the students’ use of the L1/L2 in exams and testing tasks. This is an important issue in the CLIL context because the student's ability to demonstrate that they have acquired the content of a subject may be conditioned by their competence in English. We observed that the teachers and their management teams agreed on the matter, although there was not a consensus among our participants since school A participants’ opinions on the matter differed from their peers’ in schools B and C. The management team members in school A voiced a strong opinion against the use of the L1/L2 in exams: ‘if the vehicular language is English, the exams and the presentations should be in English, otherwise, we would be distorting the reality’ (management team member 5, school A, 2015). This position was supported by all but one of the teachers in school A. The majority of the teachers argued that their students did not need to resort to their L1/L2 because ‘everything has been adapted to their level and the students won't be asked to do something they have not been taught’ (teacher 2, school A, 2013). In addition, they claimed that the subjects chosen to take part in the CLIL programme (e.g. music, sports, etc.) did not put high demands on the students’ knowledge of English. School B teachers and management teams also favoured using English for the testing tasks: ‘In fact, it should be easier for them to write the exams in the language in which they have studied the content, namely, English’ (teacher 9, school B, 2013). However, they show more flexible attitudes towards using the L1/L2 than their counterparts in school A particularly in the case of students with difficulties: ‘perhaps students for whom writing an exam in English would be an added obstacle or if their passing grade depended on that, I would allow them to use Basque’ (management team member 8, school B, 2015). A few teachers also accepted the use of Basque as the lesser of two evils in order to prevent students from copying and pasting information directly from the Internet in some of the assigned tasks. Similarly, school C management teams and teachers displayed flexibility on the matter although management team member 12 argued that the students’ need to use Basque only arises when the class is not conducted in English and have not been given the opportunity of acquiring the English terms. They believed that students who use

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English should be rewarded (management team member 12, school C, 2013) as illustrated by a teacher who allotted extra points to the students who wrote their exams in English (teacher 16, school C, 2013). In short, while favouring an all-in English policy, the key word in the issue regarding the CLIL teachers’ use of the L1/L2 is ﬂexibility in their daily basis as its beneﬁts outweigh the drawbacks, both for management teams and CLIL teachers. Hence, a discrepancy between beliefs (more prone to excluding L1/L2 use) and self-reported practices (more likely to accept the use of the L1/L2) is observed. However, participants in school A are characterized by a stricter stance than their peers in schools B and C as they believed that the L1/L2 should not be accepted in the case of exams and testing tasks. In any case, as far as the use of the L1 and the L2 is concerned there is a very similar train of thought between teachers and management teams in the three schools under analysis.

Conclusions In this study we have gathered data from both teachers and management teams, which will allow us to draw conclusions from the statements made by those working on the ground. By addressing teachers’ and management teams’ beliefs we can obtain a clearer picture of the interaction between management programme (within the remit of management teams) and actual language practices (in the hands of teachers) in CLIL courses. In addition, since school autonomy is perceived to yield benefits (OECD 2014; Pont, Nusche, and Moorman 2008), it is pertinent to examine whether management teams and teachers come to terms when it comes to the optional/obligatory nature of CLIL courses and the use of the L1 in CLIL classes. This analysis will give us the opportunity to gain a more nuanced understanding of the two bodies’ beliefs concerning those two issues. The present study illustrates that, while the schools face similar problems incorporating CLIL (i.e. the shortage of CLIL teachers, the students’ heterogeneity and the low level of English among some of the students), the schools management teams undertake these challenges differently and act on a trial and error basis. Furthermore, their decisions may not always be in line with their teaching staff's views, although eventually both teachers and management teams manage to find some common ground. This is reflected in the case of school C, where teachers’ experience in the CLIL classroom and their concerns made the management team change their original idea of boosting compulsory CLIL in favour of making the program optional. Therefore, the CLIL approach cannot be considered as a blueprint that can be applied to any context without taking into account the characteristics of the school concerned. In fact, both teachers and the management team (whose members changed their minds after three years of implementation and the feedback provided by the CLIL teachers) in school C deem necessary to make CLIL optional courses in order to mitigate and overcome the weaknesses and hindrances detected after having initially decided on CLIL compulsory courses. The complexity and heterogeneity inherent in implementing CLIL programs is also confirmed by the fact that two out of three schools altered their original plan: school B changed from optional to compulsory CLIL, whereas the aforementioned school C went in just the opposite direction and moved from compulsory to optional CLIL lessons. This is very interesting, because even though both schools are located in the same context, both follow the same educational model (the immersion program Model D + CLIL), their

A. DOIZ AND D. LASAGABASTER

teachers share very similar backgrounds, the vast majority of their students share the same L1 and belong to a very similar socioeconomic status, the teachers’ and management teams’ decisions on how to proceed with the CLIL courses simply go in opposite directions. The implementation of obligatory CLIL generates tensions as some teachers and management teams (i.e. school B) are concerned about the need to make it available to all students, whereas others (i.e. school A and school C for the near future) opt for non-compulsory CLIL due to the different problems brought about by its universalization. Throughout this process strains are created between some teachers and their management teams, because, despite the fact that equalizing opportunity is one of the basic tenets of state education, students’ selection is jeopardizing it. However, some CLIL teachers clash with the harsh classroom reality which leads them to conclude that obligatory CLIL is not an asset but rather a liability. Hence, the different options found in the case of the three schools under scrutiny regarding the obligatory/optional nature of CLIL. Nevertheless, the fact that in all schools teachers and management teams eventually manage to lie the foundations for common understanding should be received as a piece of good news and implies that original approaches to the implementation of CLIL programs are flexible and management teams tend to count on their teachers when it comes to making decisions (Pont, Nusche and Moorman 2008). In this sense, it is important to underscore that these are public schools, as the situation in private institutions may differ. In fact, in the latter it is by and large more difficult to challenge the decisions made by the management team, at least in the Spanish context. Although our results do not shed light on the actual impact of CLIL teaching (no assessment was carried out), these results are of the utmost importance because there are several aspects of the use of a foreign language as the vehicle of content teaching that appear under-researched, pedagogical implications being a very good case in point. In this vein, the use of students’ linguistic repertoire is well worth considering (Gierlinger 2015). Our study's data reveals that the lack of language management not only from regional and local authorities, but also from the school management teams, leads individual teachers to make their (less or more informed) own decisions (Lasagabaster 2017; Gierlinger 2015; M endez and Pav on 2012). In general, the participants displayed characterized flexibility on the matter, school A being the exception. Since a similar trend has also been found in other contexts, such as the Austrian context (H€ uttner, Dalton-Puffer, and Smit 2013), there seems to be a need to design more explicit language policies in CLIL programmes that will undoubtedly help teachers to cope with their methodological and language management uncertainties. In fact, some authors such as Gierlinger (2015) and Swain and Lapkin (2013) claim that a pedagogy of code switching in CLIL settings is needed to help teachers decide when students' other language options are appropriate. It is important to note that school A is an example of self-selected CLIL streams (Paran 2013; Rumlich 2016) and therefore counts on purportedly more proficient and motivated students, whereas schools B and C are not (P erez-Ca~ nado 2016), since CLIL is compulsory in an attempt to cater for all students and foster egalitarianism. This seems to have a clearcut impact on L1/L2 use, as the former school can ‘afford’ to impose a stricter Englishonly language policy, whereas the latter two are forced to be more flexible. Consequently, the selection process enable teachers in school A to implement language practices that seem not to be feasible in the other two schools.

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

Our analysis thus indicates that there are two levels of decision making. The first level (the school level) applies to the optional/compulsory nature of CLIL courses, a decision that is eventually shared by both teachers and management teams. Although at the outset of CLIL programmes it is the management team who establishes whether the courses are compulsory or not, CLIL teachers also have a say and may change the school's initial stance on this matter. While researchers (Paran 2013; Rumlich 2016) are concerned about the comparability of the results obtained by selected and non-selected CLIL groups, those working on the ground are much more worried about the consequences of making CLIL compulsory or optional on students’ outcomes and the smooth running of their everyday teaching practice. The second level (the class level) has to do with the use of the L1 in CLIL courses, which is a decision that relies on individual teachers who base their choices on their experiences and beliefs. At this second level management teams have no influence and, although they clearly state their opinions, they have no bearing on teachers’ practices. This is an issue that undoubtedly deserves further consideration, because schools would benefit from a coherent school-level L1 language policy in CLIL settings. The conclusion to be drawn is that it behoves management teams to foster coordination between the different teachers involved in CLIL programmes and to pay heed to class-level practices, because this will help to run more coherent programmes that will positively influence students’ outcomes. Schools’ language policies are currently based on teachers’ CLIL experience and beliefs, but it would be advisable to have a language policy document agreed upon by the stakeholders, a document unfortunately missing in the three schools under scrutiny in this article.

Acknowledgements The results presented in this paper are part of the following research projects: FFI2012-34214 (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness), IT904-16 (Basque Government), and UFI11/ 06 (UPV/EHU). We would also like to thank the school management and the teaching staff who participated in the study. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on a previous version of this paper.

Disclosure statement No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding This work was supported by University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Eusko Jaurlaritza and Ministerio de Econom ıa y Competitividad.

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