(Universidad de Granada, 2025-01) Ardura Martínez, Diego; Senra Silva, Inmaculada
Many studies have delved into different aspects of bilingual education examining perceptions within the educational community. However, none have explored the impact of offering bilingual programmes on a voluntary versus a mandatory basis on students' attitudes and perceptions. The aim of the present work was to investigate Spanish bilingual secondary school students’ attitudes, motivation, perceived learning, anxiety, and satisfaction with bilingual education, establishing a comparison between schools where students can only join the bilingual stream and schools where students can choose whether to join the bilingual stream or the non-bilingual one. An ex post facto research design was used, involving 261 high school students. Descriptive, mean differences, and decision tree analyses were conducted. The results reveal better attitudes and perceptions in students from schools where bilingual education is not compulsory for all. Our findings may be of interest when planning this type of approach to education.
