Exploring the ideal foreign language teacher profile in Spanish preschools: teacher education challenges

Abstract

The democratisation of early childhood education and care and the promotion of plurilingualism across Europe have facilitated the implementation of educational projects and research on early language learning at the pre-primary stage. However, in Spain and similar foreign language (FL) education contexts, it is not clear who should be implementing this early introduction of the FL, what their qualifications should be, or what preparation they require. The objective of this study was to identify the most adequate teacher profile for this language education. A Delphi research design was applied focusing on three main concerns: the most suitable teacher profile, the required qualifications, and the necessary preparation. Ninety-nine experts participated in two rounds of questioning: one qualitative with an open-ended online questionnaire and another quantitative, wherein experts’ degree of agreement was recorded on a Likert scale online questionnaire. Results suggest that an early childhood educator with at least an upper-intermediate level in the FL seems to be the most suitable profile. However, experts considered adequate preparation is necessary at both the pre-service and in-service stages, covering language improvement, specific pedagogy, and child’s development.