Assessing bilingual programs in higher education: An interview study on teachers’ beliefs

Abstract

Bilingual programs have aimed at promoting bilingual competence by using two languages as media of instruction for significant parts of the academic curriculum. In Colombia, bilingualism tends to be linked to the idea of studying non-language subjects such as geography or history through English. The current small-scale interview study presents teachers’ understandings of bilingual programs. The research participants were eleven teachers enrolled in a bilingual program at a private university in Bogota, Colombia. The study was guided by the principles of qualitative research and data were gathered from semi-structured interviews. Content and interpretive analyses were carried out on the data. The findings support the idea that understandings of bilingual structures are heavily influenced by personal experiences and roles facilitated by the setting. In addition, contradictory understandings and experiences allowed for the emergence of unbalanced relationships and opposite horizons that bilingual programs may take. In the end, some suggestions for further research and pedagogical implications are presented.