The 'native speaker effects' in the construction of elite bilingual education in Castilla-La Mancha: tensions and dilemmas

• Published in: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development Vol. 40; no. 5; pp. 421 - 435
• Main Authors: Relaño-Pastor, Ana Maria, Fernández-Barrera, Alicia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 28.05.2019; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Bilingual education; Bilingual Education Programs; Bilingualism; Classroom Communication; Classrooms; CLIL-type bilingual education; Competition; Content and language integrated learning; Course Content; Distinctiveness; Education policy; Educational Policy; eliteness; Elitism; English; English (Second Language); English language; Ethnography; Foreign Countries; Interviews; language ideologies; Language of Instruction; Language policy; Language Teachers; Language teaching methods; Language Variation; linguistic commodification; Native Speakers; native teachers; Partnerships; Prestige; Private schools; School Policy; Second Language Learning; Secondary School Teachers; Sociolinguistics; Spanish; Spanish language; Teacher Attitudes; Teachers; Teaching; Teaching Methods; Spain
• ISSN: 0143-4632; 1747-7557
• DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2018.1543696

This article focuses on the 'native speaker effects' (Doerr, N. M., ed. 2009. The Native Speaker Concept: Ethnographic Investigations of Native Speaker Effects. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter) pertaining to the construction of eliteness in Spanish-English CLIL-type bilingual programmes in the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). We focus our attention on St. Teo's school, one of the target schools of the sociolinguistic ethnography carried out in state-run and state-run private schools in La Mancha City (LMC) - 2015/2018. Data includes long-term participant observation, audiotaping of classroom interactions in the CLIL subjects, semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders, and institutional documents of the language-in-education policies implemented in the region of Castilla-La Mancha. We discuss how St. Teo's has adapted competitively to local bilingual education policies by relying on native speakers of English as guarantors of educational elitism, distinctiveness and linguistic prestige in the highly commodified market of English. The analysis brings to the fore how the inclusion of English native teachers in St. Teo's bilingual programme has had an immediate effect on the current English-medium teaching practices, resulting in asymmetrical partnerships between content and native English teachers and causing tensions and dilemmas among teachers participating in the bilingual programme.