Teacher beliefs in a CLIL education project

One of the most important and interesting questions which researchers studying teaching behaviour have sought to find out is why teachers teach the way they do. The answer to this question ineludibly takes us to the study of teacher beliefs. It is fundamental to conceptualise what teachers believe to be able to understand the way they teach. This paper is part of a research project at the university of Alcal (Spain) which seeks to study the needs of teachers involved in a bilingual teaching project being carried out in a number of primary schools in Madrid since 2003, whose main object is to integrate the teaching of a foreign language in content subjects (CLIL). The analysis of questionnaires given to teachers working in the project, together with the background research carried out will undoubtedly help us improve our knowledge about teacher beliefs. It is important to mention that most of the teachers working in the aforementioned project have never experienced bilingual teaching or rather CLIL (content language integrated learning). The analysis of their answers to these questionnaires together with some background research will evidence some fears and anxieties about this new way of teaching and the difficulties to abandon certain old conceptions and accept some innovative ones.