Educación bilingüe (español-inglés) en tres instituciones educativas públicas del Quindío, Colombia: estudio de caso

Abstract

This qualitative research aimed to describe bilingual education in three public educational institutions (IE) in Quindio, Colombia. Data collection sources were: (1) Semi-structured interview, (2) Documentary analysis, and (3) Observation. The results were as follows: The Institutional policies for bilingual education, Bilingual education practices, Intercultural practices and Conventional pedagogical model categories evidenced the need to rethink the pedagogical model. The Teacher professional development category indicated that teacher professional development activities were based on the teacher training model. The English skills development category showed a direct relationship with the Institutional policies for bilingual education and Bilingual education practices categories, since the concepts of bilingualism and bilingual communicative competence were reduced to the concept of competence achieved in English. The ICT-mediated teaching category indicated the integration of ICT into bilingual education in the three IE. The Resources for bilingual development category revealed that teachers in the three EI were trained in general aspects of teaching practice. It was concluded that all the three EIs should be encouraged to move from bilingual and bicultural education to critical intercultural bilingual education and to promote teacher professional development on issues related to the pedagogy of bilingual and intercultural education.