Lang Policy (2018) 17:479–499

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-017-9451-5

ORIGINAL PAPER

CLIL, unequal working conditions and neoliberal

subjectivities in a state secondary school

Eva Codó1 • Adriana Patiño-Santos2

Received: 15 November 2016 / Accepted: 8 September 2017 / Published online: 28 October 2017
 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017

Abstract The introduction of English and other foreign languages as media of

instruction, which is generally referred to as content and language integrated
learning (CLIL), has transformed the teaching experiences of a large number of
educators. Yet their daily struggles and personally ambivalent stances have hardly
been examined. This paper addresses this overlooked area of CLIL practice by
taking a critical sociolinguistic stance towards language-in-education policy.
Drawing on an ethnographic case study, it analyses the on-the-ground implemen-
tation of PEP, a government initiative to foster the plurilingualisation of the Catalan
education system, in a state secondary school near Barcelona. Through the situated
analysis of policy makers’, administrators’, and educators’ actions and discourses,
the paper shows how the different groups of actors rationalise their engagement with
the programme differently, while still aligning themselves with the official imagi-
nation of PEP, and constructing a collective ethos of commitment and hard work to
improve the school’s reputation. Three neoliberalised worker subject positions are
identified: the entrepreneurial head teacher, who anticipates avenues for school
transformation before they are put into place; the activised civil servants, who
construct themselves as exemplary moral agents; and the maximally flexible tem-
porary teachers, who live their participation in PEP with anxiety and a sense of
burden, but are also aware of the many opportunities PEP offers. This paper

& Eva Codó

[email protected]
Adriana Patiño-Santos
[email protected]
1
Department of English and Germanic Studies, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus
UAB, Carrer de la Fortuna, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
2
Department of Modern Languages, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Highfield,
Southampton SO17 1BF, UK

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480 E. Codó, A. Patiño-Santos

contributes situated insights on CLIL implementation and addresses issues of power

and inequality overlooked by the dominant paradigms in the field.

Keywords Plurilingualism
CLIL implementation
Neoliberalisation

of education
Language policy
Professional subjectivities
Catalan
education system

Introduction

The introduction of English and other foreign/second languages as media of

instruction has changed the learning experiences of a large number of children,
adolescents and young adults around the world. It has also transformed the teaching
experience of many educators, although their daily struggles and personally
ambivalent stances have hardly been examined. It is true that some research on
content and language integrated learning (CLIL)—the particular shape that English-
medium instruction has adopted in Europe, and increasingly also in other parts of
the world (Lin 2016; Turner 2013)—has put the focus on teacher experiences, but
mostly to understand issues of professional legitimacy and identity (Morton 2016),
as well as teacher beliefs (Bovellan 2014; Borg 2011; Hüttner et al. 2013). Other
pieces of work have looked at policy measures to support educators, such as tuition-
free working hours to create new CLIL-specific teaching materials or the
institutional availability of specialist linguistic or methodological training (Banegas
2012; Pavón and Rubio 2010). Research so far has been largely oblivious to the
overall working conditions of (mainly novice) CLIL teachers and the ways in which
the introduction of English in compulsory levels of schooling hinges on the
availability in the educational workplace of worker selves equipped to align the
teaching profession with the conditions of flexibility, instability and fragmentation
that define the contemporary work order (Gee et al. 1996).
This paper addresses this overlooked area of CLIL implementation by taking a
critical sociolinguistic stance towards language-in-education policy and practice.
We build on the tradition of ethnographic research in educational institutions being
transformed under conditions of globalisation (Codó and Patiño-Santos 2014;
Garrido and Codó 2017; Heller 2006; Pérez-Milans 2013; Rampton 2006). To do
this, we adopt a case study approach to examine the on-the-ground implementation
of the Plurilingual Experimentation Plan (PEP),1 a government-supported
scheme for introducing CLIL in primary, secondary and vocational education in
Catalonia (in the northeast of Spain) and how it unfolds in one specific school,
which we shall call Pinetree Secondary. Pinetree is a state school located in a
working class/lower middle class area close to Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia.
Regular CLIL courses were first implemented in the school in the academic year
2015–2016, during which we collected our empirical data, details of which are
provided in ‘‘The secondary school’’ section. Our goal is to understand the tensions
1
This is our translation of the Catalan Grup d’Experimentació per al Plurilingüisme (GEP).

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CLIL, unequal working conditions and neoliberal… 481

that the implementation of such a programme created, how educators made sense of
their engagement with it, and what forms of social inequality were engendered.
The paper is organised as follows. In the next section, a general overview is
presented of relevant areas of research in CLIL. This is followed by a succinct
explanation of the politico-economic perspective that frames our approach to
plurilingual education. In ‘‘The educational, legal and language policy context’’
section, some contextual information is provided on PEP, the government
scheme framing the introduction of CLIL, as well as on the broader legal
framework of education in Catalonia. Details on Pinetree Secondary School, the
state school where we undertook our ethnography are to be found in ‘‘The secondary
school’’ section. In ‘‘Data analysis’’ section, we begin with the analysis of the
official discourse on the PEP scheme, its objectives, requirements and the process of
school recruitment, to then move on to the ethnographic and discursive examination
of how the different members of the PEP team at Pinetree understand, discuss and
justify their involvement in the scheme. The conclusion will discuss the insights on
CLIL policy that can be gained from the shift in analytical focus suggested in this
paper.

A critical sociolinguistic perspective on CLIL

Broad overview of research on CLIL

CLIL has generally been defined as a ‘‘dual-focused educational approach in which

an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and
language’’ (Coyle et al. 2010, p.1, italics in the original). Initially, it was presented
as a distinctive European methodology, different from e.g. American content-based
instruction (CBI) or Canadian immersion programmes; however, several authors
have recently questioned such boundaries, arguing that different labels might
merely be the product of different traditions rather than the result of dissimilar
approaches to the integration of language and content (Lin 2016).
Pioneering CLIL promoters in Europe worked with the assumption that any
additional language would be used as a medium of instruction. This was seen as a
way of meeting the requirements of the European Union that all citizens be
proficient in two foreign languages apart from their native one (European
Commission 2003). However, over time the term CLIL has become almost
exclusively associated with English-medium instruction (Cenoz et al. 2014). CLIL
has rapidly spread across all educational levels and beyond European borders (see
Turner 2013 for Australia, and Robertson and Adamson 2013 for Asia, where CLIL
intersects with post-colonial and modernisation agendas) and has triggered
innumerable research interests. Below is a succinct (though non-comprehensive)
overview of CLIL research foci. We shall only review studies on CLIL
implementation at compulsory levels of education (primary and secondary), as
tertiary education is a distinct context in terms of student population, student
interests and teaching pedagogies, and merits separate discussion.

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482 E. Codó, A. Patiño-Santos

A first group of CLIL studies has focused on how to define the scope of this
approach as opposed to other programmes aimed at integrating language and
content (e.g. Coyle 2007; Cenoz et al. 2014; Dalton-Puffer 2008; Ellis 2003). Some
of these studies have focused on the use of L1 and of translanguaging practices as a
distinctive trait of CLIL (Lin 2015). A second group has compared the
implementation of CLIL in various educational and national settings, noting
differences (e.g. Lorenzo et al. 2010) and similarities (e.g. Marsh 2002) between
them. A further set has analysed the benefits and challenges of CLIL for the
effective learning of a second language (e.g. Agustı́n-Llach and Canga Alonso
2016; Heras and Lasagabaster 2015; Muñoz 2007) and/or for learning content
(Coyle 2007; Dalton-Puffer et al. 2010; Van de Craen et al. 2007). CLIL classroom
practices have also received attention, as it is believed that the nature of teachers’
and students’ dialogical interactions impacts content access and language learning
outcomes (Dalton-Puffer et al. 2010; Escobar and Evnitskaya 2014; Nikula 2010;
Jakonen and Morton 2013). A related line has centred on the perceptions of CLIL by
different stakeholders (Borg 2011; Hüttner et al. 2013; Pladevall-Ballester 2015;
Skinnari and Bovellan 2016), as well as on the effect of CLIL on students’
motivation to learn English (Doiz et al. 2014). Finally, a significant group has
concentrated on curricular issues and literacy skills at various educational levels
(e.g. Llinares et al. 2012; Merisuo-Storm 2007). In the following section, we shall
introduce our particular approach to CLIL education, which is novel in the field.

An ethnographic and politico-economic perspective on CLIL

As shown in the previous section, most CLIL research has been acritical. The
existing critiques have sought (a) to identify aspects of implementation that deserve
specific attention, such as the lack of specialised materials, insufficient CLIL
training for content teachers, administrators’ lack of awareness of teachers’ needs
and challenges, or lack of criteria to assess content and language in an integrated
manner (Banegas 2012; Pavón and Rubio 2010); (b) to focus on any tensions that
CLIL might engender between teachers of subject content and language teachers
(Costa and Pladevall-Ballester forthcoming) and (c) to deconstruct the multiple
advantages attributed to CLIL in relation to language learning and quality of
education (Bruton 2013).
Very few studies have brought to the fore the material conditions under which
CLIL has been implemented, the social inequalities engendered by CLIL
programmes and the ways in which CLIL impacts the daily lives of the institutions
and agents implementing the programme. One exception is the ethnographic case
study of a secondary school in Madrid, where a CLIL-oriented Spanish–English
bilingual programme coexisted with a Spanish-intensive language programme for
migrant students. Martı́n Rojo (2013) and Pérez-Milans and Patiño-Santos (2014)
explore the multiple tensions and hierarchies among students and staff that the
implementation of the bilingual CLIL programme generated. Relaño-Pastor (2015)
analyses classroom data from the same programme to show how students resisted
the elitist identities ascribed to them and foregrounded their working or lower
middle class affiliations. This investigation also underlined the need to understand

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learning English as tied to local ways of ‘‘doing learning English’’ and students’
affective histories. In the case of the school being studied, this meant not only
engaging in fluid Spanish/English bilingualism, but also speaking English with a
Spanish accent for social inclusion.
The perspective on CLIL that we adopt here is in line with these studies. It
understands schools as social institutions, and applied linguistics as an interdis-
ciplinary field (Rampton 1997). We argue that we need to understand CLIL
programmes as complex undertakings involving a multiplicity of social actors
with various (and sometimes conflicting) interests, enmeshed in networks of
shifting economic, political and material conditions, and as constructing or
reinforcing unequal power relations. This means viewing CLIL initiatives not just
as pedagogical interventions but as processes that effect important changes in
educators’ work situations, career development opportunities, professional
identities and personal lives. To do this, we must go beyond the narrow focus
of most CLIL research on teaching practices and learning outcomes and into
politico-economic processes. Block et al. (2012) argue that the interdisciplinary
nature of applied linguistics advocated by Rampton (1997) has one ‘‘blind spot’’,
which is precisely its lack of attention to political economy understood as
combining ‘‘branches of economics and politics in order to understand how social
institutions, their activities and capitalism influence each other in various ways’’
(p.2). This study purports to fill that research gap by questioning what ‘‘doing
CLIL’’ means for non-language teachers at this historical, political and economic
moment in Catalonia.
This goal ties in nicely with current debates in the field of language policy and
planning (LPP). According to Tollefson and Pérez-Milans (2017), what is needed in
LPP is an epistemological approach that allows us ‘‘to reveal the specific links
connecting trajectories of socially positioned actors with current social contexts.’’
This is best achieved through critical ethnographies of language policies which
bring together under one single research endeavour the ‘‘macro’’ concerns of state/
institutional language policy analysis and the ‘‘micro’’ focus on the everyday
contexts of policy engagement and interpretation.
In this paper, thus, we draw on the principles and practices of educational
sociolinguistic ethnography (Codó and Patiño-Santos 2014; Heller 2006; Martı́n
Rojo 2013; Pérez-Milans 2013), in order to provide an account of, on the one hand,
how wider socio-economic and political orders shape local practices, relationships
and identities displayed amongst the subjects and agents of educational practices;
and, on the other, how these local practices, including discourses produced in the
institution in which our study is situated, reproduce and, in some cases, justify such
socio-economic orders. Our analysis combines field notes and participant observa-
tion with situated discursive data, more precisely, the professional narratives
produced by the staff members of Pinetree Secondary School on their experiences as
participants in the PEP scheme.
Our analysis will draw on recent work on the neoliberalising workplace and
language therein (Urciuoli 2008; Urciuoli and LaDousa 2013). This line of
research aims to dissect the ways in which workers are being re-imagined in
contemporary work contexts. Workers are viewed as composites of skills that can

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be acquired, improved and commodified (i.e. monetised). Updating Foucault’s

notion of governmentality (1991), Fraser (2003) discusses how the new subject of
globalised governmentality is the ‘‘active responsible agent’’ (p.168). The
neoliberal citizen-worker has an entrepreneurial conceptualisation of him/herself,
and is invested in self-training and skills development as the path to personal
transformation and self-actualisation. The urge to acquire new skills, to self-
develop professionally, operates as the neoliberal technology of self. Urciuoli and
LaDousa (2013) discuss the link between new subject positions and shifting
institutional orders. As we shall see in the data analysis, these new subject
positions, are ‘‘emergent, unsettled, and sometimes unsettling’’ (p.179). In this
vein, Gao and Park (2015) show that becoming proficient in English has become a
contemporary technology of self, linked to the enactment of worker selves
orientated towards moralised neoliberal values. Taking steps to develop one’s
language competence—through, for example, geographical mobility—indexes
one’s flexible disposition, willingness to self-improve and superior moral stance,
‘‘a professional morality’’ in their own words (p.87). This, as we shall see, is
evident in our data. We shall now turn to a brief explanation of the multiple
contextual elements framing the design and implementation of PEP, the language
programme underway at Pinetree.

The educational, legal and language policy context

Initiatives to introduce English as a medium of instruction through CLIL began in

Catalonia as early as the 1990s (see Lorenzo Galés and Piquer Vives 2013 for a
fairly comprehensive historical overview). As education policy is highly decen-
tralised in Spain, language-in-education is largely in the hands of regional
administrative bodies. For this reason, there are significant differences in the nature
and scope of the various bilingual or plurilingual programmes put into place across
the Spanish state (see e.g. Bros Pérez 2015, for a succinct review of differences in
CLIL implementation in three Catalan-speaking regions).
The introduction of English as a vehicular language in Catalonia has added a
further layer of complexity to what was already a highly complex reality. The
declared language education goals of the Catalan education system are to make all
students competent in the two co-official languages, i.e. the state language, Spanish,
and Catalan, the local, historically minoritised but socially fairly prestigious
language, with the objectives of ensuring equal opportunities and enhancing social
cohesion.
Aware of the need to raise levels of English competence among children and
adolescents in the context of a globalised and tertiarised economy, a number of
policy schemes have been put into place by the Catalan government to popularise
CLIL at primary, secondary and post-secondary levels. PEP belongs to what we
might call the ‘‘third wave’’ of CLIL-support initiatives. First wave programmes
were defined by their pilot nature (1999–2005); the second wave aimed to
consolidate CLIL as a language learning methodology (2005–2012); and the third
wave aims to extend CLIL more widely. One key difference between first/second

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and third wave plans is the procedure for school participation. Whereas in the
former, schools applied within open call schemes, in the latter they are selected
by government officials. This is a crucial contextual element for understanding
policy implementation at Pinetree Secondary School, as we shall see. In spite of
direct nomination, there is relative leeway for schools to refuse participation. This
is because, unlike in other regions (Bros Pérez 2015), the Catalan approach to
CLIL has tried to avoid the top-down imposition of language policy at the
expense of the continuity and the stability of programmes (Navés and Victori
2010).
PEP is basically a training scheme for head teachers and CLIL practitioners-to-
be, which started in 2013–2014. It extends over two academic years in the form of
four 4-h sessions per year. In the first year, general methodological training is
provided, focusing on how to implement project work and task-based learning. The
second year is more directly centred on CLIL. Teachers are asked to start doing
CLIL. They have to design and implement a CLIL project for which they receive
feedback from both peers and trainers in the final session. No language training is
provided, as teachers are expected to have a B2 level of English already. PEP-
trained teachers are expected to become trainers in their own schools, helping and
encouraging colleagues to implement CLIL. Eventually, English (or French) should
be consolidated as a vehicular language and included in the school’s linguistic
project.
The broad language policy initiative framing PEP is the ‘‘Framework for
Plurilingualism’’, developed by the Catalan government for the period 2013–2016.
Its declared aims are to improve the quality of Catalan education and contribute to
developing a unique linguistic model for the Catalan education system which fosters
plurilingual competencies without undermining the centrality of Catalan. The
‘‘Framework for Plurilingualism’’ is presented as linking up with supranational
agendas, more specifically, the Europe 2020 objectives of easing mobility on a
continental level and enhancing European workforce employability and competi-
tiveness, in the pursuit of which foreign languages are believed to be instrumental
(Beadle et al. 2015).
More broadly, a key contextual element that needs mentioning here is the LEC,
the Catalan Education Law, passed in 2009, as it bears heavily on the employment
conditions of some of the teachers involved in PEP at Pinetree Secondary. The
LEC defines the regulatory framework of state-funded education in Catalonia.
One of the changes that the LEC has introduced with regard to previous laws is
the granting of greater autonomy to schools in defining their own educational and
organisational projects, and intervening (to a certain extent) in the recruitment of
new teachers and the renewal of contracts for temporary ones. LEC has been said
to introduce the logic of the market into the Catalan education system by
intensifying elements of competition among schools. CLIL schemes are amongst
the most popular options employed by schools to seek distinction (Lorenzo Galés
and Piquer Vives 2013).

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The secondary school

From September 2015 to July 2016 we investigated2 the on-the-ground implemen-

tation of PEP at Pinetree Secondary School.3 We employed ethnographic methods
of data collection which involved intensive engagement in the field: the collection
of spontaneous narratives, as well as previously arranged semi-structured individual
and focus group interviews with the teaching staff; observation of classes, both
English language classes and content courses taught in English at different
educational levels (from 12 to 16-year olds) and covering a variety of subjects (PE,
technology, lab research and social sciences) as well as audio-recording of one
CLIL course. A significant number of visual and textual documents were also
gathered and relevant institutional events (such as an Open Day information session
for prospective parents) were attended. Although fieldwork is still ongoing, the
analysis presented here is based on the following sets of data: ethnographic field
notes from 26 visits to the school, an interview with 1 (of 3) senior members of the
Department of Education in charge of the design and implementation of the PEP
programme; a focus group with the PEP teachers, the school head and the head of
the English department and 5 semi-structured individual interviews with the content
teachers who were participating in the programme.
Pinetree Secondary School is a state-funded school located in the centre of a
working class/lower middle class area on the outskirts of Barcelona. The school
offers compulsory secondary education and baccalaureate, but no vocational
training schemes. The language education programme on offer is comparable with
that of most state secondary schools in Catalonia: Catalan is the preferred vehicular
language, Spanish is taught as a subject, English is the compulsory foreign language
and French is optional. In 2013–2014 a pilot scheme to teach an optional course in
English was started and continued with the partial teaching in English of a
compulsory course in 2014–2015. That same year, four teachers began attending the
two-year PEP training scheme—previous to their starting to teach their content
courses totally or partially in English. In 2015–2016 PEP was begun. Five teachers4
(out of some 50 staff members) started to teach their content courses in English
following a CLIL methodology. At the time of data collection, Pinetree Secondary
School was the only one of five state schools in the city to provide CLIL education.
The school enjoys a good academic reputation in the local education market as
proven by growing enrolment rates. This has not always been the case, and a fairly
‘‘dark’’, i.e. non-academic and socially conflictive period for the school (some
10 years ago) is still vividly remembered by veteran teachers and some students and
families. The new managerial team (2013–2017) has consolidated the academic
profile of the school. ‘‘Quality teaching in the centre of the city’’ is the motto

2
These data were gathered for the APINGLO-Cat Project (2015-2017), funded by the Spanish Ministry
of Economy and Competitiveness (ref. FFI2014-54179-C2-1-P). We would like to thank Iris Milián for
her help with data transcription.
3
For ethical reasons, the name of the school is a pseudonym, as are the names of all the other
participants.
4
The five CLIL teachers belong to the ‘‘PEP team’’, although only four of them attended the training.

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CLIL, unequal working conditions and neoliberal… 487

announced on the school webpage. Various initiatives connected to English (and to

a lesser extent French), including PEP, have formed the basis of the school’s
commitment to quality education.

Data analysis

To understand the situated evolution of PEP, it is important to analyse first how the
official discourse defines what PEP is, what kinds of schools it is designed for and
what kind of engagement it requires from schools, head teachers and educators. The
PEP objectives, criteria for school selection and requirements for programme
implementation are contained in the Catalan Department of Education’s Resolution
of 8th April 2016.5 According to this document, the aim of PEP is to ‘‘foster the
development of interdisciplinary and transversal projects in order to activate the
students’ plurilingualism in at least three languages’’ (p.1). No specific mention is
made of CLIL, but rather one of ‘‘actions to teach curricular content and other
education activities in one of the foreign languages of the curriculum’’.6 This gives a
lot of freedom to schools to decide how to implement PEP (no minimum
requirements are established in this official document, though in fact there was a
minim of one action—a course, a didactic unit, etc.—for each of the 4 grades of
compulsory secondary education). All state-funded schools are, in principle, eligible
to participate, but selection will be made by the local administration. The document
includes a section on requirements and obligations. Candidate schools must submit a
two-year plan containing envisaged PEP actions. This plan has to be approved in a
staff meeting (claustre) and incorporated into the schools’ pedagogical and
language project. Schools must also ensure the human resource infrastructure for the
organisation of the programme by involving the managerial staff, two to three
content teachers to be trained as PEP teachers, but also the availability of regular
meeting times for the ‘‘PEP team’’. Impact measures are also contemplated, such as
publicising the programme on the school web page and the publication of the
actions, didactic units and materials developed under this framework.
As part of our fieldwork, we interviewed Àngels, the senior official coordinating
PEP in the regional government. One of the things we wanted to find out more about
was the criteria for choosing schools. The following extract contains crucial
information on this, shedding light on situated policy implementation (transcription
conventions are provided in the ‘‘Appendix’’).

Excerpt 1: ‘‘Schools with the capacity to progress’’a

1. ANG: how::/are [the schools] selected/well the territorial services are asked to look for
schools/following this this this this this\ requirement\
2. EVA: which are::/((laughs))
3. ANG: well::\ (.) the criteria have been evolving as well\

5
This document is available from: http://educacio.gencat.cat/documents/PC/ProjectesEducatius/
Resolucio_GEP_2016.pdf (Retrieved 6th July 2017).
6
Our translation from Catalan.

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488 E. Codó, A. Patiño-Santos

4. EVA: =ah[OK\
5. ANG: [but\ (.) the first year it was/(.) schools/u:::m\ (.) that were average:/neither excellent
schools\ because they are already doing CLIL/they are already doing things/because they are
already doing them\
6. EVA: OK\
7. ANG: =nor schools that::\ have lots of problems/because that would be difficult/(.) schools with the
capacity to:/(.) to progress:/right/
8. EVA: m: OK\
9. ANG: e::\
10. EVA: in other words\ exactly the school/that we are looking at\ it’s it’s exactly this picture\ (.) yes\
11. ANG: e:::m\ motiva::ted/willingly to do it::\ with a managerial staff who::/want to support the
project::/who are willing to a give them::\ (.) a bit of time to organise things::/(.) with someone
who::\(.): who wants to mount a (team) effort:::/and so on\
12. EVA: mhm\
13. ANG: with staff who:::\ are not English teachers/but who have a good enough level of English/to\
jump in at the deep end to do that\ (.) these were the criteria\ (.) so the territorial services/(.) sent
us their proposals\
14. EVA: mhm\ (.) OK\
15. ANG: =and they::\ (.) proposed some schools
a
For reasons of space we are only providing English translations of the original narrative data in Catalan

In this extract, Àngels specifies the organisational and ‘‘attitudinal’’ requirements

that PEP schools should meet. In turn 7 she describes eligible schools as ‘‘schools
with the capacity to progress’’, which she defines as halfway between ‘‘excellent
schools’’ and those ‘‘with many problems’’. This description of target schools
indexes, in fact, the central (although not explicitly stated) mission of PEP, namely
to extend CLIL practice beyond the group of early adopter or innovation-focused
schools. From that turn on, we can reconstruct how the category ‘‘schools with the
capacity to progress’’ is envisioned by language policy officials. Motivation and
willingness to ‘‘do PEP’’, as well as a supportive managerial team, are at the core of
contextual requirements. Such attitudinal traits (which, we will later assert,
constitute Pinetree’s collective ethos) are embodied by teachers and school
administrators. In what follows we will analyse, ethnographically and discursively,
three worker subject types that are both the condition for and the outcome of PEP
implementation: the entrepreneurial self, enacted by Pepa, the head teacher,
discussed in 5.1; the activised civil servant, embodied by Jordi and Núria, contained
in 5.2, and the maximally flexible self, represented by Juan and Anna, analysed in
5.3. These three subject types respond to the unequal positioning in the school
organisation of each teacher group and their different contractual situations.7 We
will discuss the ways in which each group participates and rationalises their
7
In the Catalan/Spanish system, permanent teachers are government employees with positions for life
(funcionaris). Access to these positions requires passing an official examination (oposicions). Because of
the emic relevance of the term funcionaris (literally: civil servants), we will refer to teachers in this
category as civil servants throughout this paper. The teachers with non-permanent positions are called
interins in Catalan, and we will refer to them as non-permanent or temporary teachers. Interins are
typically appointed to a different school each year.

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CLIL, unequal working conditions and neoliberal… 489

involvement in the PEP programme by bringing to the fore their anxieties,

aspirations and ways of defining the situation. The three selves represent the
complex and unequal symbolic and material conditions under which this local
government plan is delivered.

Pepa, the entrepreneur, leading a visionary team

As is the case in other Catalan schools, mainly from peripheral areas, Pepa, the
current head of Pinetree, found in PEP an opportunity to improve the school’s
reputation, and the academic performance of its students. Supported by her 20-year
trajectory as a school teacher, she is a respected leader. A few years ago, she
decided to take a six-year leave during which she worked in the private business
sector. This seems to have had some influence on the way she manages the school.
She is a very positive and enthusiastic character who supports all her teachers’
initiatives. ‘‘I always say yes (to any proposal)’’ is an identity trait of hers that she
keeps repeating to whoever cares to listen. Another aspect that she likes
foregrounding is how much she (and the educators at Pinetree) work, especially
during evenings or weekends and in July, when everybody else is on holiday.
During our ethnography, we observed how the teachers were continually motivated
to propose or participate in projects, innovative schemes, training opportunities, out-
of-school trips and visits, and in general any activities that involved themselves and
the students in extracurricular activities where team work and social skills were
fostered. In this vein, Pepa was one of the most enthusiastic proponents of PEP. In
her discourse Pepa aligns with and displays the school’s ‘‘capacity to progress’’ that
Àngels made relevant as the basic requirement for becoming a PEP school.
Whenever our research team discussed the origins of PEP at Pinetree with Pepa,
she would recall her pioneering decision to encourage some content teachers (more
specifically Anna, to whom we will refer later) to start teaching an optional course
in English back in 2013, before PEP had been launched, and to have supported other
initiatives related to the promotion of English, such as inviting ERASMUS students
to give talks in the school. In telling and retelling these avant la lettre initiatives,
Pepa enacts an entrepreneurial and even ‘‘visionary’’ self who anticipates avenues
for school transformation before they are put in place. Excerpt 2 allows us to
complete the foundational narrative re-created by Pepa where, besides emphasising
collective agency, she puts a great deal of discursive effort into backgrounding
vertical decision-making and the potential tensions generated by PEP.

Excerpt 2: ‘‘Not French but English’’

54. PEP: and it seemed to us that starting at school and and in the first year having music in French was
like like a way to force it a bit\ right/but we said mind you the English [scheme we could do]/
((laughs)) we think we are (.) talking about people (.) who had an acceptable level of English so
we could do it\ so then we talked to the staff/Anna: and Eduard aaa: Núria and Juan e:mmm
signed up/before that/Anna was already doing things in English with the first years/they started on
the plurilingual idea saying well/start do::ing the optional PE class: of basketball in English/which
is easy and so on
55. EVA: mhm

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490 E. Codó, A. Patiño-Santos

56. PEP: because the kids had more occasions when they could speak or hear English and for them to
express themselves that way/she ran PE for the second years last year/right/but all that wasn’t part
of a project/[but rather it was:
57. EVA: [not part a school project/
58. PEP: it was it was the plurilingual project right- \ it wasn’t the PEP project\
59. PEP: [so it was last year when we accepted the PEP

In this extract, Pepa constructs the suitability of the Pinetree teaching staff for
PEP. She makes the staff’s agency relevant by presenting their active role as
decision makers. This is signalled in turn 54 through key actions, such as refusing
the suggestion of PEP representatives to implement the programme in French, as
none of the primary schools where Pinetree students come from has a French
language programme. This decision indexes the axiological values of committed
teachers who do not hesitate to defend their students’ interests. Pepa emphasises
how they strictly followed the requirement that PEP be a schoolwide endeavour to
be discussed and approved at the staff meeting. To foster the idea of horizontality
and consensus, Pepa uses the Catalan verb ‘‘apuntar’’ (literally sign up for) to
characterise the process of teacher selection for PEP (turn 54). In her discursive
reconstruction, the four teachers voluntarily decided to join PEP,8 but this version of
the foundational narrative is challenged by some of the educators, as we shall see
later. It is interesting to observe how Pepa backgrounds the way in which Anna
came to teach her optional course in English (‘‘Anna was already doing things in
English’’), leaving it to the listener to infer that it was Anna’s decision. Pepa’s
rationale for the decision to introduce English as a vehicular language appears in
turn 56 ‘‘because the kids had more occasions when they could speak or hear
English and for them to express themselves that way’’, which highlights her and the
whole team’s commitment to catering for their students’ needs.
To summarise, Pepa makes relevant a collective self of committed and proactive
educators led by an enthusiastic head teacher, who are all for giving students the
means to better their futures, and they have the linguistic ability and the team ethos
(willingness, motivation, hard work and readiness to engage in teamwork)
demanded by the policy makers. The team ethos produced by Pepa is retold (re-
appropriated) by the teachers according to their own material circumstances,
foregrounding tensions between professional duty and the material conditions
framing PEP.

Jordi and Núria, the ‘‘activised’’ civil servants

Jordi and Núria represent the voices of those civil servants who find in PEP the
opportunity to contest the public imagining of state employees as lazy, passive and
8
Note that Pepa does not mention the fifth teacher, Jordi, whose engagement was ‘‘taken for granted’’
given his second language proficiency and his being part of the school’s managerial team. Having a
member of the managerial team among the PEP members was also an official requirement for PEP
participation.

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CLIL, unequal working conditions and neoliberal… 491

comfortable in their stable situations. Jordi, a permanent technology teacher, is a

member of the school’s managerial team that promoted the plurilingual shift in
2013, before PEP arrived. Núria, in turn, is a permanent science teacher who
decided to start teaching in English before it was required by PEP by introducing
some activities in her elective Lab Research course. Excerpt 3 illustrates the ways in
which Jordi and Núria co-construct their exceptionally activised civil servant selves.

Excerpt 3: ‘‘The only civil servant there was me’’

313. JOR: one second \ (.) I (.) when I became a (permanent) secondary school teacher/I went to
London to do a three-week course/(.) [right/
314. PEP: [right/
315. JOR: and the only civil servant there/was me\
316. NUR: me too
317. JOR: yes but she was in another ()
318. JOR: there were people there who hadn’t even been employed for one year\

In this extract, Jordi enacts the ‘‘opportunity discourse’’ when in turn 313 he brings
to the communicative scene a small story in which he describes himself as taking
advantage of government-sponsored language training at his earliest opportunity.
Jordi’s going to London is presented as happening immediately after his having
become a permanent teacher, which we know ethnographically was actually not the
case, since he took the course two years after he had signed a permanent position.
Jordi’s discursive goal is achieved, since his story manages to create a sense of
immediacy that indexes his entrepreneurial subjectivity in line with the team ethos that
Pepa wants to foster in the school and to which PEP is instrumental. This is reinforced
in turn 315, when Jordi claims that ‘‘the only civil servant there was me’’ to which
Núria, the science teacher, retorts by reminding him that she was there too. So, in the
evaluation, Núria and Jordi jointly recreate the collective moral ethos of the school by
presenting themselves as different and even rare among the category of funcionaris
(civil servant teachers). In line with Gao and Park (2015), developing one’s English
competence is a key action indexing self-responsibility and professional worth. Jordi,
in particular, manages to present himself as an exemplary moral agent, who, despite his
comfortable professional situation, seizes every chance for professional development.
This invests him with the moral authority to implicitly judge those who do not do so, as
observed in turn 315.
In other parts of the focus group, discourses of individual motivation and
professional and personal challenge were also drawn upon to explain teachers’
involvement in PEP. Eduard, the third funcionari involved in PEP, even used the
word ‘‘reactivating myself’’ as a justification, clearly echoing activation discourses
typical of neoliberal policy (Garrido and Codó 2017). What we see is a complete
alignment between PEP schools in the official imagination, the foundational
narrative constructed by Pepa and the subjectivities constructed by the permanent
teachers involved in the scheme. Let us now turn to the cases of the two non-
permanent CLIL teachers by examining in detail the narrative produced by one of
them, Juan.

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492 E. Codó, A. Patiño-Santos

Juan and Anna, the ‘‘masochistic’’ non-permanent teachers

More difficult material conditions are evoked in Juan and Anna’s discourses and
actions. Both represent the group of non-permanent teachers who are ‘‘asked’’ by
the institution to participate in PEP. Juan, the technology teacher holds a BSc in
maths but was offered a temporary position at Pinetree Secondary School as a
technology teacher. He has been in the school for two years. Like Anna, the PE
teacher, he was requested to participate in PEP by the head teacher, Pepa. While
Anna is very explicit about the fact that she could not ignore Pepa’s request if she
wanted to continue working in the same school, where she has been for eleven
years, Juan constructs a more nuanced discourse, which blends elements of personal
opportunity, interest and motivation—in alignment with his permanent colleagues—
, a moral commitment to what he sees as quality state education in a working class/
lower middle class neighbourhood and, like Anna, his desire to keep his post at
Pinetree, where he is professionally satisfied.
Juan’s discourse is more student-orientated than the discourse of some of the
permanent teaching staff, who, as we saw above, focused more on personal rewards.
For him, PEP means ‘‘a benefit both for the school and the students’’ and a personal
opportunity to reconnect with the language. Yet, all this is at a high personal cost, as
he discusses in the interview with Eva.

Excerpt 5: ‘‘PEP is for masochists’’

598. EVA: OK\ well \ I had a question (…) (.) does it help or hinder you/well it hinders you/I
guess/like in terms of the number of hours that you need to inve::st in it right/
599. JUA: yes \ (.) for me and my home\
600. ((laughs))
601. EVA: to your family!
602. JUA: well \ (.) yes (like everything\) that’s how it goe::s (.) there are weekends that you’re shut
away doing work/(.) forever/[and that produces more work\ (.) and () being
603. EVA: [ye:s\ with the gi::rls\ and my wife:\
604. EVA: there’s the work produced by the subject/and the work produced by the PEP\ (.) they are
two jo::bs\
605. JUA: well I mean that PEP stuff\ making us prepa::re\ (.) a:: whole \ topic/(.) that () that I mean a
topic is not just a couple of sessions\ (.) if they ask you\
(…)
1133. […] they are\ still \ (.) many more hours of preparation/(.) at home i::\ (.) it gets to a point/that
you have a family\ you have a life \ (.) and all that () also- \ the work that you do at school/o::r
(.) at a language school or (…) I mean I I/I was telling (her)\ every day/(.) I go to bed a::t half
one two in the morning.
1134. EVA: but that’s awful!
(…)
1141. EVA: and the MARKING/(.) and all that/
1142. JUA: yes yes \ I mean::\\ (.) (you leave) the schoo:l \ at two thirty \ (.) you get home at three three
thirty\ (…) you keep () who’s gonna cook\ (.) () cook\ (.) my wife has another job\ I do the
cooking\ (…) () so you get down to it at five in the afternoon \ (.) you go to pick up the kids \
and I want to spend time with my girls \ (…) [I want to be with them\ then it’s half past eight/(.)
dinner/(.) off to bed\ (.) so from ten/(.) work::/starts\ (.) preparing cla::sses/marking exa::ms/(.)

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CLIL, unequal working conditions and neoliberal… 493

at the same time\ (.) I also\ go to the::\ I go to a language school\ to (…) the official language
school\ (.) they are afternoons that you take out\ (.) when/you do training courses/you have one
of them in the afternoon\ (.) and on top of that everything tha:t I’m doing for the PEP\ (.) a:: and
all that’s necessary for the technology [courses]\ which are projects/(.) it’s not like maths where
you present a topic/a you say ok\ tomorrow I need to expla:in/this bit here\ no\no\ there you
need to do\ (.) you need to prepare/work and so on \ (.) there are lots of (…) things\ (.) lots\ now
we have a three D printer (…)
1153. EVA: so/you have a three:: D printer/
1154. JUA: ye::s\ (.) well if you want [I can show you it] later (.): and I am in charge o::f o:f/]
1155. EVA: [a::h\ (.) of making it work working (.)
1156. JUA: I need to prepare thi::ngs/to keep practising/[(.) I am doing (…) lots of things \ (.) there is
no time \ and if you want to dedicate time to your family the::n\

In turn 599, as a response to Eva’s question about a detrimental aspect of PEP

that Juan himself had brought up previously, Juan elucidates: ‘‘for me and for my
home’’. In turn 605, he focuses on the additional work that the PEP training
signifies. Juan then summarises his busy life as a non-permanent teacher to get to
the critical point of his experience when we claims he goes to bed ‘‘a::t half one two
in the morning’’ every night (turn 1133). In turn 1142 he offers more evidence of his
difficult situation by explaining in detail his daily afternoon schedule and spelling
out the many job-related activities he engages in, such as taking English classes in
order to obtain an official B2 certification9 and periodically enrolling in teacher
training seminars, apart from his setting up of technology projects (we must
remember that he is a mathematician, not an engineer, and that this is the first year
in which he has taught technology courses). In turn 1155 he summarises his points
through an implicit assessment: ‘‘there is not much time\ and if you want to dedicate
time to your family the:n\’’. The vowel lengthening and the suspense tone indicate
that there is an implicit negative evaluation of the situation that cannot be avoided.
So stressful is the situation for Juan that later on, after the interview had finished and
Eva was on her way to visit the technology lab with him to see the new 3D printer
he mentions in the excerpt, Juan started talking about PEP again and summarised his
personal stance as ‘‘if you’re interı́ (non-permanent), PEP is for masochists’’ (field
notes, 22/01/2016). His readiness to make the personal sacrifices that being involved
in PEP entails is encapsulated in his alignment with Pepa’s argument in the focus
group discussion (excerpt below).

Excerpt 6: Quality state teaching as a moral duty

388. PEPA: […] it’s like at the level of the public image in [the city]/like/having a secondary
school where a number of classes/fifty percent\ twenty percent\ or ten percent are taught in
English\ on top of the English classes/I think it gives it a good reputation/if I had a kid
I’d put [him in that school]
389. JUA: [a local STATE school ((said slowly and with emphasis))

9
Given the limited availability of content teachers with an accredited B2 level, it is currently possible to
occupy one such position in Catalonia without an official foreign language certification. This moratorium
will expire on June 30th, 2019.

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494 E. Codó, A. Patiño-Santos

In turn 389 Juan’s contribution adds concerns of class equality to Pepa’s

discourse about the advantages of PEP. That is, for Juan the important thing is that
they are working in the interests of social justice, enabling Pinetree students (most
of whom are of working or lower middle class backgrounds) to access skills, such as
competence in English, that have long been considered the prerogative of the upper-
middle classes in Catalonia. So, Juan is caught in a tension between a moral
commitment to quality education, his need for professional stability and the
demands of a system which exploits the insecurity of non-permanent teachers to
carry out projects such as PEP.

Discussion and conclusions

A great deal of current research has focused on the contextual practicalities

affecting learning in CLIL contexts. However, very few studies have tried to link
what happens in the classroom with wider socioeconomic and political processes.
The ethnographic examination of how CLIL is being ‘‘done’’ in Catalonia, that is,
why certain schools come to offer CLIL and why they manage to get certain
teachers (and not others) on board has allowed us to present a larger picture of CLIL
implementation. It has enabled us to explore some of the situated challenges,
tensions and decisions that policy makers, teachers and administrators, as the social
actors in charge of implementing new language policies, make. The analysis of the
data gathered at Pinetree Secondary during the 2015–2016 academic year has
allowed us to reconstruct the different stances taken by the different groups of social
actors according to their distinct institutional roles, circumstances and personal/
professional agendas. With this new approach to CLIL we aim to contribute to
current research by addressing key issues to do with power inequalities and
teachers’ working conditions that have not been taken into account under the
dominant research paradigms in the field.
Regarding policies, our aim has not been specifically to analyse PEP, its
effectiveness or implementation process, but to show the ways in which policy is
practised. We believe that ‘‘practised policy’’ must be understood as inextricable
from the particular political, cultural, ideological and socio-economic histories of
each actor and social context (Pérez-Milans 2015). We have shown how the
introduction of a marketplace logic into the Catalan public education system, in the
form of measures of greater school autonomy (encouraged by the new education
law), leads schools’ heads to search for elements of distinction that set their schools
apart from similar institutions in a highly competitive educational arena. Given the
globalisation and linguicisation (Pujolar 2007) of the economy, most of these
‘‘innovative’’ actions are geared towards the intensification of plurilingual language-
in-education policies that mainly (though not exclusively) prioritise English.10 The
insistence on foreign languages taps into Catalan parents’ anxieties about their
10
Batxibac, a scheme to foster the learning of French, is also very popular among Catalan families and
schools. It is a bilingual and bicultural programme allowing students to obtain both the Spanish and the
French baccalaureate degrees.

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CLIL, unequal working conditions and neoliberal… 495

children’s future employability in national and global markets. This linguistic

frenzy, we argue, is also generationally tied to parents’ own failure to achieve
fluency in English, often attributed to the formal approach to language education
prevalent in the Catalan/Spanish education system until recently.
The adoption of English as one of the assets to compete in this education
market represents, for schools located on the periphery and with poor reputations,
the possibility of attracting more academically-orientated students. As reported in
other regions of the Spanish state, such as Madrid (Pérez-Milans and Patiño-
Santos 2014; Relaño-Pastor 2015) and current research in Castilla-La Mancha
(Relaño-Pastor 2018, becoming a bilingual or plurilingual school can transform
the social image of secondary education institutions which have faced truancy and
dropping-out. The embracing of English as an asset for the school normally
encourages the managerial staff to foster and support initiatives related to
bi/plurilingualism, as we have shown in the case of Pinetree. Since the PEP
scheme is still in its early stages, we can only observe provisional results to fulfil
the managerial staff’s expectations. Thus, for example, some months ago, the head
teacher showed us, very proudly, how the results for English of students finishing
compulsory secondary education have improved with respect to previous years.
For teachers, in turn, English is the new skill required for employment or
professional stability. As we have seen, English proficiency allows pre-service
content teachers the possibility of accessing a teaching position more easily or
have relatively more stable employment.
At Pinetree Secondary PEP is made possible thanks to the dedication of a group
of teachers who align themselves with the circulating discourses and practices of
distinction that help lend their school prestige in the area. However, the ways in
which the teachers participate in the programme are diverse and unequal, given
their different employment circumstances. Such conditions give rise to an internal
stratification of the workforce and draw on a set of subjectivities aligned with a
neoliberalising institution (and education system) among the members of the
Pinetree staff. Their discourses and practices emically position educators into two
broad categories: ‘‘permanent’’ (funcionaris) vs. ‘‘non-permanent (interins)’’. The
civil servants have the possibility of freely deciding whether or not to join the PEP,
which they mostly construct as the embodiment of a morally superior professional
stance and the possibility of activating themselves. By contrast, the non-permanent
teachers, with a less stable position, need to accommodate themselves to the
demands of the institution and offer their skills and expertise so that the school
fulfils the requirements for participation demanded by PEP. The fact of the matter
is that, without the non-permanent teachers, there would not be enough courses
taught in English at Pinetree Secondary (at least some CLIL activities per year of
compulsory education) for the school to be allowed to join the scheme. Non-
permanent teachers are forced to become flexible, ‘‘happily’’ to embrace new
teaching methodologies. If they do, given the increasing autonomy of schools and
head teachers to define teacher and school profiles, they will probably not be
invited to stay at the school the following year. It is therefore in their interests to
accept. As a counterpart, Juan’s narrative reports how his enforced flexibility
entails devoting more time and effort to his classes for no guaranteed future

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496 E. Codó, A. Patiño-Santos

reward,11 but it is also a professional opportunity for him. This ambivalence,

together with concerns of social equality, shapes his discourse and practice.
The critical sociolinguistic approach to CLIL adopted in this paper has allowed
us to throw light on the complex material conditions of situated CLIL implemen-
tation, and has made visible the hidden efforts of many self-sacrificing non-
permanent teachers who, in the Catalan context, represent 32.13% of the workforce
(23,406 teachers) in the state education system, according to data released by the
trade union USTEC (2016). With only 300 state teaching posts opening in
2016–2017 the situation will not change for a few years to come. What we can learn
from the success of PEP in Pinetree School is that it is predicated on the institutional
exploitation of already existing inequalities, and on the basis of an increasingly
precarious teaching profession that demands ever greater flexibility from its
workforce. We believe policy makers should pay more attention to these
complexities and understand how they might impact the continuity and sustain-
ability of language policies such as CLIL over time. We also consider it necessary
that the contribution to CLIL of temporary educators should be more explicitly
recognised both symbolically and practically in the form of easier access to
stable teaching positions.

Appendix

Symbols used in transcripts

PART: participant name
(.) short pause (0.5 s) - self interruption
(:) long pause (0.5–1.5 s) = continuation of utterance after overlapping
() incomprehensible fragment \ descending intonation
AA loud talking / rising intonation
A:: lengthening of vowel or consonant sound (()) slowly
[] turn overlapping with similarly marked turn

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Eva Codó is Senior Lecturer of English language and linguistics at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Her research focuses on the analysis of the sociolinguistic aspects of plurilingualism from a critical and an
ethnographic perspective. She has studied language policy and practice in a variety of institutional
contexts, among which state bureaucratic agencies and non-governmental organisations. She is currently
principal investigator of a research project on the implementation of plurilingual policies in the Catalan
education system. Amongst her most recent publications is the chapter ‘‘Language policy and planning,
institutions and neoliberalization’’ for the Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning (2017), J.
Tollefson & M. Pérez-Milans (Eds.).

Adriana Patiño-Santos is a Lecturer in the Modern Languages Department of the University of

Southampton. Her research interests include interactional sociolinguistics, language socialisation,
storytelling, and multilingualism. Her research has been focused on multilingual local practices as a lens
through which to observe complex sociolinguistic situations (such as the presence of migrants of Latin
American backgrounds in different sites) from a sociolinguistic perspective. Her most recent work has
been the edition of a special issue on storytelling and ethnography to be published in the International
Journal of the Sociology of Language (2018).

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