Pre-service Teacher Training in Bilingual Education: Analysing Teaching Syllabi in the Degrees of Primary Education

Abstract

In these last decades, the educational realm has been shaped by new realities, such as the ever-growing bilingual (and plurilingual) contexts, which needs to be accounted in teacher education. Considering that successful initial teacher training is one of the factors which influence students’ language learning experience, this study analyses the teaching syllabi related to Bilingual Education (BE) of the degrees of Primary Education of Italian universities in order to describe the training future Primary Education teachers receive in terms of competences and contents. The sample of documents (N=257) are analysed using the SPSS software for the quantitative analysis and MAXQDA for the qualitative analysis. Results show a predominance toward language proficiency, particularly in English, in both the competences and contents Primary Education pre-service teachers acquire during their university training. Educational competences are not frequently found in the analysed syllabi. As for the contents, apart from the linguistic elements, knowledge of different FLT methods is also present on a modest scale. In conclusion, the analysis of the teaching syllabi emphasises teacher training based on language proficiency concerning the FL in contrast to more pedagogical or didactic-focused competences related to BE.