University Teachers’ Perceptions at the Early Stages of a Bilingual Teacher Education Programme

Abstract

This article reports on a qualitative exploration of the perceptions held by a group of eight university teachers concerning the initial stages of a teacher education programme, in which some modules were taught through the medium of English. The still on-going experience started in the 2014-2015 academic year in a group of the Primary Edu-cation Degree Course at the University of Málaga (Spain). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight lecturers at the end of the academic year in order to elicit their in-terpretations of the first stages of a bilingual programme, of themselves as teachers in the programme, and of the conditions in which it was set up and resourced. The study adopted a thematic approach to data analysis. The findings provide an overview of the challenges and opportunities of English as a Medium of Instruction at a particular context that hopefully sheds some light on key issues concerning the quality of bilingual programmes in higher education.