Intercultural Education Through Spanish Secondary Bilingual and Non-Bilingual Students’ Eyes: Perceptions, Benefits, and Future Impact

Abstract

Placed in the broader discourse on Intercultural Citizenship Education (ICitE) this study explores the anticipated impact of bilingual education (BE) on intercultural competence (IC) and global civic orientations associated with intercultural citizenship (ICit) among students in their final year of secondary school (4th-year ESO) in Spain, focusing on differences in perceptions between bilingual and non-bilingual participants. A quantitative methodology was employed, utilising a closed-ended validated questionnaire administered to 2187 students from bilingual and non-bilingual settings across the whole country. The results reveal that bilingual students perceive BE as beneficial for their IC, whereas their monolingual counterparts assign less such utility to BE. We conclude that even though intercultural education is not explicitly taught in the curriculum, it is implicit in bilingual education programmes due to the positioning of the additional language as a medium and lived daily practice with tangible outcomes rather than an academic requirement. We also discovered that within the bilingual students’ group there are lower expectations regarding BE’s impact on the anticipated development of their global civic identity compared to intercultural awareness. The findings indicate that BE offers a context naturally conducive to IC development and has potential for fostering ICit which appears to be untapped. This study has implications for the discussion on the role of BE in education for the 21st century and urges stakeholders to address BE affordances for nurturing ICit by adding the critical citizenship component to it as proposed in the Intercultural Citizenship Education framework.

1. Introduction

Over the past decades, significant efforts and resources have been allocated by the European Union (EU) to building educational systems that would ensure the becoming of active, fully fledged citizens prepared for living in the interconnected and diverse 21st-century world and ready to face challenges such as increased human mobility, political polarisation, climate and health crises, and ongoing armed conflicts, to name a few (European Commission 2020). These issues do not have a simple, straightforward solution and require a well-developed set of versatile skills. Plurilingual, intercultural, and democratic competences (Council of Europe 2020) are among the competences most often considered paramount for thriving in the 21st century. To support system-level implementation, the EU and the Council of Europe have developed and updated reference frameworks that operationalise these 21st-century competences across curricula and assessments. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2018a) and the model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) (Byram 1997) address and promote plurilingual and intercultural competences. Along with that, the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) aims to develop democratic citizenship in students (Council of Europe 2018b).

Byram (2008) bridged these crucial dimensions and conceptualised Intercultural Citizenship Education (ICitE)—a pedagogical approach that builds on these ideas and aims to foster an individual who is an intercultural mediator, who possesses “critical cultural awareness” (capable of taking a critical stance towards his/her beliefs and those transmitted by others) and who is capable of engaging politically with the issues whose impact extends beyond national borders. Recent literature on global and intercultural citizenship education emphasises the key role of foreign language education (e.g., Baker and Fang 2020; Porto et al. 2025). However, as outlined in a recent review, bilingual education (BE) is not explicitly considered in these conceptualisations, leaving its potential as a site for intercultural citizenship development underexplored.

Empirical literature on BE in Spain has often explored linguistic, cognitive, and academic outcomes (e.g., Baker et al. 2016; Turnbull 2020) with fewer studies examining intercultural or civic dimensions as perceived by those most directly involved—students themselves. In this light, meta-analytic and review work highlights the need to include both bilingual and non-bilingual populations to improve the generalisability of findings and to incorporate students’ perspectives rather than relying predominantly on teacher reports or small, localised samples (Durán-Martínez and Fernández-Costales 2025; Reljić et al. 2015). Moreover, little attention has been given to students’ expectations of bilingual education’s future benefits. According to Vroom’s (1964) expectancy theory of motivation, individuals’ beliefs about future outcomes can significantly influence their current engagement and effort. In an educational context, if students believe that participating in a bilingual programme will have a positive impact on the development of their intercultural skills and on becoming “citizens of the world”, such expectations could motivate them to engage more deeply with their learning. Therefore, students’ expectations act as a lens through which they view their educational experiences, potentially affecting their level of enthusiasm, persistence, and the overall impact of the programme. Exploring these expectations, therefore, yields important insights into the perceived value and effectiveness of bilingual education. It highlights what aspects of intercultural competence students feel they are developing and those that are not addressed enough, which in turn allows us to identify strengths to build on and gaps that need filling in current programmes.

This study focuses on secondary-school students, particularly those in their final year of compulsory secondary education (Educación Secundaria Obligatoria—ESO), as this period is formative for both attitudes and life choices (Pfeifer and Berkman 2018). Adolescence is when many core beliefs about society and identity become solid, and in the educational trajectory of Spanish students, the last year of compulsory secondary education is a bifurcation point. At around 15–16 years old, students in the 4th-year ESO must choose between the baccalaureate (Bachillerato), which opens the door to pursuing higher education, and entering vocational training (Belando-Montoro et al. 2025). This decision often reflects their aspirations and self-perceived competences. At this level, students have accumulated years of (bilingual) schooling and are contemplating their future roles in society. In case BE is indeed nurturing intercultural citizens, one might expect these graduating students to express that in their expectations for the future. Ultimately, understanding what these students believe BE can and cannot offer with respect to intercultural competence and global civic orientations associated with ICit is timely and relevant for curriculum design, teacher education, and policymaking in Spain and beyond.

2. Theoretical Backdrop

2.1. Bilingual Education and Intercultural Competence in Spain

The first modern educational law, LGE (Ley 14/1970), introduced in 1970, led to the evolution of Spanish language education (Jefatura del Estado 1970). Foreign language education became an important component of compulsory education. Over time, traditional foreign language teaching (FLT), in which language is regarded and taught as another subject in the curriculum, has been reimagined and has given way to bilingual education (BE) (Palacios-Hidalgo et al. 2022). Spain has become one of the leading European countries to have implemented BE on a large scale; in collaboration with the British Council, the Ministry of Education started the Bilingual Education Programme (BEP) (Dobson et al. 2010). The BEP has now been in place for nearly three decades, spanning 10 autonomous regions and reaching over 40,000 students from early years to secondary (Levy n.d.). Along with that, local bilingual centres based in public schools have emerged all over the country. This was indeed a forward-looking initiative, considering the subsequent efforts of European governing bodies such as the European Commission and the Council of Europe at the beginning of the new millennium, promoting multilingual proficiency among citizens (European Parliament and Council of the European Union 2006). This L1 + 2 policy encouraged different forms of bi-/plurilingual education, with two or more languages to be used for teaching content, to spread more widely across Europe. Further advancing this trend, national education laws (e.g., LOMLOE—Organic Law Amending the Organic Law of Education) have consistently promoted plurilingualism and supported bilingual sections, providing legislative support to regional efforts (Hidalgo-McCabe and Tompkins 2024).

Considering the diversity of contexts varying from country to country and region to region, the implementation of BE has differed, yet the most widely spread and adopted approach to BE in Europe and Spain in particular is Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). CLIL is most commonly defined as:

A dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language. That is, in the teaching and learning process, there is a focus not only on content and not only on language. Each is interwoven even if the emphasis is greater on one or the other at a given time.

(Coyle et al. 2010, p. 1)

Foundational to this approach is the “4Cs framework” (Coyle et al. 2010) comprising cognition, content, communication and its focal aspect—culture. The culture component of the 4Cs framework is composed of two interconnected dimensions. On a macro level, culture sheds light on context-specific cultures and values in society. It functions as a lens through which individuals perceive and make sense of the world around them. In CLIL, learners are required to cultivate intercultural understanding, which has a significant impact on all other components of the 4Cs framework. On a micro level, each subject discipline or theme within CLIL has its own distinct culture, including its content, communication style, and interpretation of the world. These subject-specific norms affect the way in which content is conceptualised and the discourse functions used to support learning processes. This aspect of the culture component requires learners to adopt the perspectives and practices of a relevant role (e.g., global citizen, geographer, scientist, etc.) to successfully engage in CLIL. Kramsch (2014) emphasised that culture and language are deeply interconnected, and learning an additional language brings about insights into the norms, values, and communicative practices inherent to the culture. In this light, apart from serving as a linguistic exercise, bilingual education scaffolds cultivating intercultural competence.

The European version of Intercultural Competence (IC) emphasises the notion of contact and exchange at the micro level between citizens and groups within civil society (Levrau and Loobuyck 2018). It is worth noting that linguistic competence was mainly overlooked in the conceptualisations and models of IC. This omission was addressed by Michael Byram, one of the most influential scholars in the domain of IC and language education. Byram (1997) proposed the model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). ICC represents a combination of “communicative competence” in another language with “intercultural competence”; it involves mediation between mutually incomprehensible languages. Byram’s view on ICC aimed to outline and provide a description of the specific components that can be formulated as pedagogical objectives, allowing for their use by (foreign language) teachers to plan, teach and assess learning (Barrett and Golubeva 2022). The model conceptualises effective cross-cultural engagement depending on a combination of attitudes, knowledge, skills, and critical cultural awareness, referred to as savoirs (Byram 2021). The ICC model is componential, and apart from placing political and critical cultural awareness in the centre, it does not specify interrelationships between the components; rather, it describes them. This approach is grounded in the knowledge that the development of intercultural attitudes varies depending on the settings. Since its inception, the ICC model has been widely accepted as foundational to European education for the 21st century and the design of reference frameworks such as CEFR (Council of Europe 2018a) and RFCDC (Council of Europe 2018b).

Following the developments in European educational policies promoting plurilingualism and interculturality, LOMLOE—Spanish education law—has introduced plurilingual, intercultural, and citizenship competences in the competence-based curricula in Primary, ESO, and Bachillerato educational levels adopted in schools all over the country. While learning additional languages is mandatory and the foreign language subject is an essential component of the educational programme across these stages, there is no discrete subject titled “Intercultural Education”—rather, interculturality is addressed cross-curricularly through plurilingual, intercultural, and citizenship competences, where applicable, through transversal contents specified by regional curricula (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional 2022a, art. 9; 2022b, arts. 10–11; 2022c, art. 16). Analyses of LOMLOE’s treatment of global competence conducted by Neubauer and Fernández-Aragón (2025) similarly position it as a competence-based, cross-curricular construct rather than a standalone subject.

The relationship between intercultural competence and bilingual education has been widely discussed in CLIL and bilingual education scholarship in Spain and other comparable contexts. Bilingual programmes are often seen as a vehicle to support pupils’ development of intercultural skills. In the Andalusian context, for example, Méndez García (2012) examines the link between CLIL and intercultural communicative competence in bilingual schools and states that CLIL can create conditions conducive to intercultural development, particularly in terms of learners’ attitudes, awareness, and critical cultural reflection. It is also argued that learning subject matter through a foreign language is inherently favourable for intercultural awareness due to the exposure of students to new cultural contexts and modes of communication. For instance, one German bilingual education initiative reports that “linguistic and intercultural competencies develop naturally and implicitly when learning in two languages”—through the choice of content and topics and the need for students to deal with a foreign language environment, which requires understanding cultural nuances (e.g., differing forms of politeness or communication styles) embedded in the language (Böttger and Müller 2023, p. 215).

A framework for assessing the effectiveness of Spanish BE proposed by Gómez-Parra et al. (2021) identifies intercultural competence as one of the key dimensions for evaluating bilingual education outcomes along with mobility and employability. Existing studies provide consistent evidence supporting the positive influence of bilingual education on employability and mobility (e.g., Palacios-Hidalgo et al. 2021). However, research findings regarding intercultural competence appear to be less conclusive (e.g., Amor et al. 2023). While bilingual and CLIL programmes are frequently presented as favourable environments for intercultural learning, empirical findings vary depending on how intercultural competence is conceptualised, how intercultural learning is pedagogically addressed, and the methodological lens through which findings are interpreted. Studies that understand intercultural competence in terms of awareness, attitudes, or perceived intercultural development tend to find positive associations between BE and intercultural outcomes, across both higher-education and secondary-school contexts. In higher education, Gómez-Parra et al. (2021) explored the impact of bilingual education on students’ employability, mobility and intercultural awareness and surveyed 746 undergraduate students. They found that students who graduated from bilingual programmes reported higher levels of intercultural awareness compared to their non-bilingual counterparts. Similarly, Arnaiz-Castro et al. (2022) identified a significant relationship between bilingual educational background and intercultural competence. Their quantitative study, encompassing 417 respondents educated in bilingual programmes in Colombia, established a positive influence of BE on the development of intercultural attitudes and awareness. At the secondary level, a positive relationship between BE and IC has been identified, specifically in studies focusing on perceived intercultural learning and intentional pedagogical practices. Gómez-Parra (2020) and Méndez García (2012) report positive perceived developments in students’ intercultural awareness and attitudes in Andalusian CLIL settings, particularly where intercultural learning is explicitly supported through exchanges, international assistants, culturally embedded content, or reflective activities.

At the same time, other studies measuring IC in groups of students from bilingual and non-bilingual streams—often employing narrower or trait-like conceptualisation of IC—have obtained more cautious and non-significant results. The research by Amor et al. (2023) examining secondary school students in two Andalusian schools suggests that while bilingual programmes hold potential for enhancing intercultural competence, the actual outcomes may vary. Their study revealed no significant difference in the perception of intercultural competence between bilingual and non-bilingual students. In the same vein, Lochtman (2021), using an intercultural sensitivity scale with secondary CLIL learners, reported no significant differences between CLIL and non-CLIL students. Variation in outcomes observed across the existing body of literature appear to be linked to differences in how IC is conceptually framed, pedagogically addressed, and examined empirically.

2.2. Global Citizenship and Intercultural Citizenship Education

In its traditional sense, citizenship education has concerned fostering loyalty to one nation, which often disregarded the multicultural nature of modern-day societies (Portera 2023). The unprecedented levels of globalisation and interconnectedness of the world called for a re-conceptualisation of citizenship education, which would explicitly focus on global competence, intercultural awareness and understanding, and collective responsibility. The perspective saw an important shift in 2005, when the Council of Europe declared the European Year of Citizenship through Education (Council of Europe 2005), elevating the role of Education for Democratic Citizenship (EDC) and the idea that intentional pedagogy can empower individuals to exercise their rights and duties. Building on this, UNESCO (2014) advanced Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and bridging it with the Sustainable Development Goals sought to prepare learners to take active roles in confronting global challenges and to foster a sense of common humanity. Together, these initiatives point in the same direction, stating that effective 21st-century citizenship education integrates democratic engagement, intercultural understanding, and global awareness, moving beyond a purely national civics orientation.

Along with that, the author of the impactful model of ICC, Michael Byram (2008) observed that there was a pressing need for introducing an active citizenship component to the framework. In their literature review, Barrett and Golubeva (2022) refer to Byram’s work and conceptualise intercultural citizenship (ICit) as extending ICC by incorporating critical cultural awareness, ethical responsibility, and active civic engagement at both local and global levels. Byram et al. (2025), along with Porto et al. (2025), emphasise intercultural citizenship as fundamentally action-based, stressing the importance of critical analysis, ethical reflection, and transnational social activism within language learning contexts. From this perspective, language teachers’ roles extend far beyond transmitting content knowledge and fostering “value-free” skills; they assume great responsibility for encouraging learners to “make judgements, as in ‘critical cultural awareness’ … and become involved in political engagement” (Byram 2021, p. 123). In the context of the conceptualisation of intercultural citizenship, “political engagement” is fundamental and is defined as the ability to:

… develop their own ideas, beliefs, and commitments, become involved in public life and practice politics; and may therefore challenge authority [at any level—family, school, sports club, national and international government].

(Byram 2021, p. 123)

Grounded in the same framework, Kong (2024) conceptualises ICit through active community engagement, stressing civic participation, cultural decentering, and social justice advocacy as essential competencies for learners in intercultural dialogue. Interestingly, Morgan (2024) proposes an additional dimension to the application of ICit by implementing counselling psychology techniques to address the emotional barriers in intercultural communication.

Alongside “intercultural citizenship”, several studies in language education adopt the label “global citizenship” (e.g., Ferguson 2024; Xu and Knijnik 2024). The two terms are often used interchangeably in language education, yet usage varies by context and emphasis. For clarity, we outline how “global citizenship” is constructed in recent language-education studies, from intercultural and critical pedagogical approaches to neoliberal and national identity frames.

Ferguson (2024) examines three International Baccalaureate (IB) international schools in Finland, the Netherlands, and Australia, using phenomenological interviews with students, teachers, and school leaders and reflexive thematic analysis, demonstrating that “global citizenship” is often lived as everyday interculturalism, i.e., relational contact, adaptability, and open-mindedness learnt through informal social encounters rather than formal civics. From a complementary critical perspective, Xu and Knijnik (2024) report a three-year ethnographic study in multicultural Western Sydney (Australia) with socially and linguistically disadvantaged learners of Chinese as an additional language. Grounded in Freirean dialogic pedagogy, they aimed to cultivate critical consciousness and intercultural awareness; here, “global citizenship” is framed as critical engagement with global ethical challenges rather than the accumulation of generic “soft skills”.

A different perspective is observed in studies situated in China, pointing to more instrumental and nationally framed orientations. Wang and Print (2024), drawing on qualitative work in secondary schools (interviews and school materials), show GCED being articulated through economic competitiveness, national identity, and Confucian values. This narrative aligns “global citizenship” with state priorities and human-capital logics rather than universal ethics (Wang and Print 2024). In higher education, Baker and Fang (2020) emphasise related neoliberal focus: their qualitative study with international students in English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes outlines how universities’ internationalisation agendas often tie “global citizenship” to English proficiency, employability, and “global workplace” readiness more than to social or ethical responsibility (Baker and Fang 2020). In their subsequent theoretical work, Baker and Fang (2022) highlight how “global citizenship” is still mostly routed through English-medium study and career goals, with less attention to civic responsibility or engagement.

In European language education, the term “intercultural citizenship” has taken root as a clearer, action-oriented construct, grounded in Byram’s intercultural citizenship education and the ICC model (Byram 2021). Since our study is situated in the European context, we adopt ICit used alongside ICC as our guiding lens. In what follows, we use “intercultural citizenship” to refer to pedagogies and outcomes that combine intercultural competence with ethically informed participation and civic engagement, reserving “global citizenship” and its derivatives for contexts where that term is used explicitly and for our questionnaire item “[I believe that my participation in a bilingual programme] will offer me the chance to feel like a citizen of the world”, which treats it as a global civic self-concept.

2.3. Intercultural Citizenship and Bilingual Education

Language education is widely regarded as an ideal context for developing 21st-century skills, including democratic and citizenship competences (Council of Europe 2020). It is grounded in the nature of communicative language teaching methods (e.g., group work, discussions, and roleplays), which are similar to pedagogical approaches used to cultivate competences for democratic culture (Council of Europe 2018c). Additionally, foreign language education affordances typically allow for naturally fostering intercultural communicative competence by creating opportunities for authentic contact with other cultures. With intentional planning and effort on the part of the teacher, the same language learning experiences can be employed to pave the way toward fostering intercultural citizenship (Byram 2008). In fact, Byram et al. (2025) and Porto et al. (2025) highlight foreign language learning as a cornerstone for critical citizenship education, as it creates space for multilingual dialogues (English–Spanish) in which students can engage with ethical, political, and historical issues. Such activities help learners develop intercultural competencies, critical reflection, and ethical awareness (Porto et al. 2025).

In bilingual education, the connection between intercultural competence and intercultural citizenship can be approached through the learning processes occurring in the classrooms. Perspective-taking, decentering, and reflection on cultural norms and values are regarded as crucial components of intercultural learning in language education (Byram 1997; Deardorff 2006). When it comes to bilingual and CLIL settings, these processes are typically enabled through such pedagogical practices as discussion, collaborative tasks, and negotiation of meaning across languages. Since engaging with alternative points of view in this way requires learners to deal with differences, justify opinions, and reflect on values, they get familiar with forms of ethical reasoning and dialogue associated with democratic participation (Council of Europe 2018c; Porto 2018). From this perspective, intercultural competence developed in bilingual education does not constitute intercultural citizenship in itself, but it can be understood as a set of dispositions and orientations that may prepare learners for further civic and ethical engagement, depending on pedagogical intentionality and opportunities beyond the classroom.

It is noteworthy that bilingual education has been largely absent from the discussions and conceptualisations of intercultural citizenship education, despite its inherent focus on culture and its positive impact on the development of intercultural competence. Even a well-established bilingual model, CLIL (Coyle et al. 2010), is still not fully woven into intercultural citizenship education. Porto (2018) pointed at this gap and argued that adding democratic and civic purposes would push CLIL past its instrumental orientation. CLIL, with its strength in integrating language and subject content, has been reimagined and conceptually evolved into the Pluriliteracies approach (Coyle and Meyer 2021), which emphasises critical cultural awareness, agency, and active citizenship. These priorities align closely with the goals of intercultural citizenship education, suggesting that bilingual education models have significant potential for fostering democratic citizenship competencies in tandem with language and content learning (Coyle and Meyer 2021; Porto 2018).

2.4. The Current Study

While existing literature provides some valuable insights into the potential benefits and challenges of bilingual education with regard to intercultural competence, our study seeks to contribute further by examining these dynamics within the Spanish educational context on a broader scale. By addressing the limitations of previous research and adopting a comprehensive approach that considers both bilingual and non-bilingual perspectives, this research aimed to advance our understanding of the role of bilingual education in intercultural learning. The main goal of this study was to explore secondary school students’ expectations regarding the intercultural benefits of bilingual education, with particular attention to the development of intercultural dispositions and global civic self-positioning associated with intercultural citizenship. By comparing perceptions of students enrolled in bilingual tracks and those from non-bilingual educational settings, the research sought to enrich the ongoing dialogue on the role of bilingual education in supporting the development of intercultural awareness and global and intercultural citizenship and contribute meaningfully to educational practice.

The following research questions guided this study:

• Do bilingual students in their final year of secondary school (4th-year ESO) enrolled in Spanish bilingual programmes expect that participation in bilingual education will allow them to become intercultural individuals with global civic orientations?
• Are there significant differences between bilingual and non-bilingual students in their perceptions of bilingual education’s anticipated usefulness in becoming intercultural individuals with global civic orientations?

3. Methodology

3.1. Context of the Study

Situated within the context of European education, Spain has its distinct pathway when it comes to foreign language education and bilingual education. Given that education in Spain is decentralised, many Autonomous Communities develop their own bilingual programmes and policies, often rooted in national CLIL guidelines and the British Council—Ministry of Education BEP model (Otto et al. 2024). In Andalusia, the Plan de Fomento del Plurilingüismo was approved in 2005 to introduce bilingual streams (Spanish plus a foreign language) across all school levels (Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Andalucía 2005). As of 2023, the plan had resulted in nearly 1000 bilingual centres, both primary and secondary, supported by language-immersion initiatives and increased foreign-language resources (Otto et al. 2024). In the Madrid Autonomous Community, the Bilingual Programme was launched in 2004, initially in primary and later extended to ESO and Bachillerato. Approximately 30–50% of curricular subjects are taught in English, and teachers must now obtain C1-level proficiency plus CLIL methodology accreditation—a requirement added to enhance language and pedagogical quality (Mañoso-Pacheco and Sánchez-Cabrero 2022; Hidalgo-McCabe and Tompkins 2024). According to the recent data, in Madrid, 63.6% of secondary schools are now fully bilingual (Hidalgo-McCabe and Tompkins 2024). Other regions, such as Galicia, Catalonia, Valencia, and the Basque Country, have implemented similar bilingual schemes, sometimes with additional regional languages alongside English. By 2022, Spain had approximately 1.5 million students enrolled in bilingual programmes across more than 4000 schools, illustrating the widespread adoption of these initiatives (Otto et al. 2024).

This quantitative study was part of the large-scale national research project, “Future of Bilingual Education (FoBE)”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ref. no. PID2021-127030B-I00), that aimed to explore students’ perceptions on the usefulness of bilingual education by collecting data from all autonomous communities and independent cities Ceuta and Melilla in Spain through administering a closed-ended questionnaire designed by the FoBE research team.

The study employed a non-probabilistic sampling strategy, based on self-selection of schools and their willingness to participate. As an incentive, each institution was offered a report with infographics summarising its results, which may have attracted schools with a stronger interest in bilingual education BE. This aspect is addressed in the discussion as a potential source of selection bias.

3.2. Participants

Participants were students enrolled in the final year of secondary education across Spain. The FoBE research team targeted schools that have bilingual itineraries introduced in the curriculum, with implementation forms varying from private and semi-private international schools and those with the Bilingual Education Programme powered by the British Council to public schools having bilingual streams coordinated by bilingual centres (centros bilingües). In order to obtain a non-bilingual sample for comparative analysis, public schools without bilingual programmes were also approached. A total of 2187 students participated, comprising 1663 respondents from bilingual programmes and 520 from mainstream (monolingual) educational settings. The geography of the study spanned all 17 autonomous communities and 2 independent cities, Ceuta and Melilla. As for the gender distribution, 52.13% (1140) of the participants were females, 45.36% (992) were males, and 2.51% (55) identified as “other”, providing a balanced sample for statistical analyses.

3.3. Instrument

The instrument for data collection was a closed-ended questionnaire designed by the research team of the FoBE project. Since the overarching goal of the project was to explore students’ perceptions of the expected usefulness of BE in a broader sense, the questionnaire comprised five sections, one of which aimed at collecting demographic data and the other four targeting key factors associated with the effectiveness of bilingual programmes (i.e., mobility, employability, intercultural competence, and plurilingual competence). This study focused on the items in the “Intercultural Competence” section and demographic information relevant to the stated objectives and research questions. The “IC” section of the FoBE questionnaire focused on students’ expectations regarding the intercultural benefits of BE, including items on anticipated developments in intercultural attitudes, skills, knowledge, and global civic orientation. While these dimensions are widely regarded as foundational to intercultural citizenship, they do not in themselves constitute civic participation or ethical engagement. Measuring such aspects of ICit as engagement with difficult or controversial topics, ethical deliberation, or civic action would require context-sensitive items, safeguarding, and validated scales with invariance across diverse regions and programme models—these conditions were not feasible in a short, in-class survey with minors deployed nationally. Therefore, the findings are interpreted as reflecting students’ expectations about intercultural competence and global civic orientations associated with ICit, rather than its enacted forms.

The questionnaire utilised a Likert scale ranging from 1 (very little) to 10 (very much) to elicit detailed quantitative responses. Prior validation confirmed high internal consistency and reliability of the instrument, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients exceeding 0.9 for the “Intercultural Competence” scale (Espejo-Mohedano 2025). Each item on the scale was evaluated to determine if its removal would increase the overall reliability. The analysis showed that the alpha coefficient did not improve significantly with the elimination of any item, confirming that all items should be retained. The results can be seen in

Table 1. Item Reliability Statistics.

Item	Cronbach’s α If One of the Items Is Discarded
It will offer me the chance to feel like a citizen of the world	0.90305
It will promote my understanding and acceptance of others	0.89034
It will improve my ability to adapt to diverse cultural contexts	0.89101
It will broaden my knowledge of other cultures	0.89727
It will allow me to have access to more cultural products (books, films, series, music, videos, video games, etc.)	0.90757
It will improve my empathy (ability to put myself in other people’s shoes)	0.90687

:

This thorough reliability analysis confirms that the scale employed is suitable for measuring the intended construct of intercultural competence within our study population. The high reliability suggests that the scale consistently reflects the students’ perceptions of their anticipated intercultural competence, providing a solid foundation for subsequent statistical analyses and interpretations in this research.

3.4. Data Collection

Since the project set out to accomplish ambitious goals, such as collecting massive data from schools all over Spain, significant efforts on the part of the FoBE research team were required at the recruitment stage. This meticulous process involved searching for and identifying schools offering bilingual programmes/streams, creating a database, and establishing contact with the selected schools via phone calls and/or emails. To incentivise participation in the study, the research team offered to provide a report accompanied by infographics outlining and explaining the results obtained in a given institution. Data collection involved in-class electronic administration of the questionnaire, opening with an introductory part informing the participants about the main objective of the study, as well as disclosing confidentiality and data protection policy. The university’s ethical committee approved and authorised the research project (ref. no. CEIH-23-26), which was confirmed by the corresponding documents. Thus, ethical codes of conduct were thoroughly followed in the course of this investigation.

3.5. Data Analysis

Statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 29.2 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). The collected data underwent thorough cleansing procedures, including the exclusion of questionnaires with over 25% missing responses or evident anomalies. Descriptive statistical analyses were initially performed to understand general trends and the distribution of responses. Subsequently, due to the non-normal distribution of data, non-parametric tests (Mann–Whitney U test) were applied to investigate significant differences in the self-perceived intercultural competence scores between bilingual and non-bilingual student groups (Muijs 2010).

4. Results

This study aimed to explore secondary school students’ expectations regarding the intercultural competence benefits of bilingual education, focusing on their development as intercultural individuals and citizens. Analyses compared perceptions of students enrolled in bilingual programmes with those in non-bilingual educational settings, including item-level examination within the bilingual group.

An initial comparison of overall intercultural competence scores using the Mann–Whitney U test revealed statistically significant differences between the two groups (U = 222,111.5, p < 0.0001; rank-biserial r = 0.322; Cohen’s d = 0.61), indicating a moderate-to-large practical difference (see

Table 2. t-Test for Independent Samples.

		Statistic	p	r Biserial	Cohen’s d
Intercultural Competence	Mann–Whitney U	222,111.50000	<0.0001	0.322	0.61

Note: Ha: μ Non-Bilingual ≠ μ Bilingual.

). These differences reflect students’ perceptions associated with participation in BE and should be interpreted as associative rather than causal.

Students enrolled in bilingual programmes reported higher overall intercultural competence scores (M = 7.18, SD = 2.11) compared to non-bilingual students (M = 5.82, SD = 2.58), with Cohen’s d confirming a moderate-to-large practical difference (see

Table 3. Group Descriptives.

Title 1	Group	N	Mean	Median	SD	SE
Mean Score	Non-Bilingual	440	5.82348	6.00000	2.57714	0.12286
	Bilingual	1488	7.17932	7.50000	2.11056	0.05471

).

Item-level analysis confirmed this pattern across the entire “Intercultural Competence” domain (see

Table 4. Students’ Anticipated Intercultural Benefits by Programme Type.

	Group	N	Mean	Median	SD	SE	Cohen’s d
It will offer me the chance to feel like a citizen of the world	Non-Bilingual	481	4.67568	5.00000	3.15417	0.14382	0.556
	Bilingual	1548	6.30879	7.00000	2.86999	0.07294	0.556
It will promote my understanding and acceptance of others	Non-Bilingual	473	5.50106	6.00000	3.02610	0.13914	0.531
	Bilingual	1544	6.95207	8.00000	2.62922	0.06691	0.531
It will improve my ability to adapt to diverse cultural contexts	Non-Bilingual	477	6.31447	7.00000	2.82874	0.12952	0.510
	Bilingual	1540	7.57922	8.00000	2.35941	0.06012	0.510
It will make me want to live in a foreign country	Non-Bilingual	463	6.03456	6.00000	3.10963	0.14452	0.361
	Bilingual	1526	7.08060	8.00000	2.83735	0.07263	0.361
It will broaden my knowledge of other cultures	Non-Bilingual	462	6.64719	7.00000	2.86254	0.13318	0.483
	Bilingual	1526	7.82765	8.00000	2.29206	0.05867	0.483
It will allow me to have access to more cultural products (books, films, series, music, videos, video games, etc.)	Non-Bilingual	469	6.50107	7.00000	3.13692	0.14485	0.608
	Bilingual	1533	8.03457	9.00000	2.30410	0.05885	0.608
It will improve my empathy (ability to put myself in other people’s shoes)	Non-Bilingual	468	5.07051	5.00000	3.18947	0.14743	0.439
	Bilingual	1526	6.36959	7.00000	2.89370	0.07408	0.439
It will positively influence the way I am as an intercultural individual	Non-Bilingual	467	5.43255	6.00000	3.08625	0.14281	0.551
	Bilingual	1518	6.95257	8.00000	2.64993	0.06801	0.551
It will positively influence my way of being in the world as an intercultural individual	Non-Bilingual	466	5.51931	6.00000	3.13438	0.14520	0.545
	Bilingual	1507	7.01924	8.00000	2.62413	0.06760	0.545

Note: p-values were Bonferroni-corrected. Cohen’s d indicates practical significance.

). All nine item-level comparisons showed statistically significant differences (p < 0.0001). To control for Type I error, p-values were Bonferroni-corrected, and all differences remained statistically significant. Cohen’s d was calculated for each item to indicate practical significance, ranging from 0.361 to 0.608, demonstrating moderate-to-large effect sizes.

The largest between-group gaps appeared for:

• “I believe that my participation in a bilingual programme will allow me to have access to cultural products” (bilingual M = 8.03 vs. non-bilingual M = 6.50; gap = 1.53; d = 0.608).
• “I believe that my participation in a bilingual programme will offer me the chance to feel like a citizen of the world” (bilingual M = 6.31 vs. non-bilingual M = 4.68; gap = 1.63; d = 0.556).

Moderate differences were observed for:

• “I believe that my participation in a bilingual programme will improve my ability to adapt to diverse cultural contexts” (bilingual M = 7.58 vs. 6.31; gap = 1.26; d = 0.510).
• “I believe that my participation in a bilingual programme will promote my understanding and acceptance of others” (bilingual M = 6.95 vs. 5.50; gap = 1.45; d = 0.531).

Within the bilingual group, the highest expectations clustered around exposure- and knowledge-oriented items, while the lowest means were reported for empathy and feeling like a citizen of the world. Non-bilingual students showed the same ordering but at lower levels.

Finally, expectations tied to being an intercultural individual were consistently high within the bilingual cohort:

• “I believe that my participation in a bilingual programme will positively influence the way I am as an intercultural individual” (M = 6.95; d = 0.551).
• “I believe that my participation in a bilingual programme will positively influence my way of being in the world as an intercultural individual” (M = 7.02; d = 0.545).

These results indicate moderate-to-high expectations among bilingual students regarding their development as intercultural individuals and, to a lesser extent, as intercultural and global citizens. All results are reported with Bonferroni-corrected p-values and Cohen’s d effect sizes to indicate practical significance.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

The main goal of this study was to identify whether Spanish students in their final year of secondary school expect to have higher levels of intercultural competence and feel like intercultural citizens due to their participation in bilingual programmes.

With regard to the second research question, we established that across the entire domain of “Intercultural Competence”, students enrolled in bilingual programmes assessed the anticipated positive impact of BE higher than their non-bilingual counterparts. The gap between the mean scores of the two groups assigned to each item ranged between 1.0 and 1.64. These results align with recent studies suggesting that participation in BE promotes the development of intercultural competence. In their study of Spanish bilingual graduates’ self-perceived employability, international mobility, and intercultural awareness (N = 741, online survey), Palacios-Hidalgo et al. (2021) found that alumni of bilingual programmes self-reported significantly higher intercultural competence and openness to international mobility than the participants with mainstream education backgrounds. In the same vein, the research conducted by Gómez-Parra (2020) involving Spanish secondary students demonstrated that BE offered a setting conducive to intercultural development, which was often linked to experiences that go beyond traditional content teaching, such as taking part in exchange programmes and day-to-day interactions with foreign language assistants, underscoring the importance of real-life communicative settings in fostering interculturality. Beyond statistical significance, the magnitude of the observed effect indicates meaningful differences in educational terms. The overall gap between groups is ≈1.36 points on a 10-point scale, with a moderate-to-large effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.61, Cohen 1988) and a probability of superiority of ≈66%, meaning that in two out of three random comparisons, the bilingual student scores higher than the non-bilingual student. Furthermore, this effect size implies an approximate 24% non-overlap between distributions, that is, nearly one quarter of the scores do not coincide, reflecting a noticeable separation between the profiles of both groups. In practical terms, these metrics suggest that the difference is not trivial: perceptions of the intercultural benefits of bilingual education are consistently higher among those enrolled in bilingual programmes. This finding reinforces the educational relevance of the effect, especially considering the high reliability of the scale (α > 0.90), and points to the need to leverage this potential to strengthen less developed components, such as global civic identity, through participatory experiences and work with “difficult topics” in the curriculum.

This finding suggests that the perceived benefits and value of BE are more evident among those with firsthand experience of this mode of education. Insights from the comparative study by Shepherd and Ainsworth (2017) may help interpret this pattern: these authors report that students enrolled in bilingual programmes tend to assign greater practical meaning and value to English than their peers in non-bilingual settings. The everyday use of English for content learning, collaboration, and classroom interaction positions the language as a useful tool with tangible outcomes rather than merely a school subject. Such perceived practical relevance may strengthen bilingual students’ belief in its long-term benefits. Outside BE, by contrast, English is typically confined to language classrooms and often viewed as something to be tested rather than as a resource integrated into daily practice and future trajectories (Shepherd and Ainsworth 2017). The difference in how the language is positioned—as a medium and lived practice versus as a school subject—may therefore be associated with the perceptual gap we observe: students in bilingual tracks tend to report greater expectations of intercultural benefits, while for non-bilingual students such expectations appear less pronounced.

Answering the first research question, our findings indicate that students enrolled in bilingual programmes expect bilingual education to shape their way of being as intercultural individuals. Their scores assigned to all items associated with the “Intercultural Competence” dimension are consistently above the non-bilingual group, suggesting that students with continuous exposure to bilingual education anticipate stronger intercultural-development benefits by the end of compulsory schooling. Additionally, a closer look at the internal results within the bilingual student cohort reveals a noteworthy pattern. The anticipated broadening of their intercultural knowledge and openness to otherness was rated by students considerably higher than their expected sense of global citizenship (feeling like a citizen of the world). Considering that the secondary school curriculum, neither in public nor in private and semi-private schools, states “intercultural education” as a separate subject, a reasonable interpretation is that intercultural awareness is inherent in bilingual education. On the other hand, the potential of BE to develop a strong global civic identity appears underexplored. An underlying reason could be that cultural knowledge occurs implicitly through content selection and the routine need to operate in the L2, including the pragmatics of communication embedded in language use (Böttger and Müller 2023), whereas fostering “global citizen” identity requires more intentional and experiential engagement. As Ferguson and Brett (2023) note, global citizenship for young people is most often formed through participatory experiences such as service-learning within courses, organised charity work, and student activism. The limited presence of these components in Spanish BE may underlie the comparatively lower perceived effects on this construct (Frank 2021).

Additionally, the weaker anticipated development of global civic orientation among bilingual students could stem from a limited understanding of what being a “global citizen” truly entails. Even if bilingual programmes implicitly foster intercultural awareness, students may not consciously connect this with the broader concept of global citizenship. Evidence from the assessment of global competence in the 2018 “Programme for International Student Assessment” (PISA) supports this claim (OECD 2018). In that assessment, which tested 15–17-year-olds’ ability to examine global issues, appreciate other perspectives, and engage across cultures, Spanish students ranked among the highest in showing respect for other cultures and cognitive adaptability, but their self-reported efficacy and knowledge about global issues remained unexceptional (near the OECD average) (OECD 2018). This suggests that Spanish secondary students from both bilingual and non-bilingual educational settings might not fully grasp the practical meaning of global citizenship, beyond general cultural openness, respect and curiosity. Being a “global citizen” encompasses understanding global problems, seeing oneself as part of an international community, and taking action for the common good—aspects that might be insufficiently addressed in the curriculum.

At the policy level, Spain’s latest curriculum reform (LOMLOE) has strengthened cross-curricular competencies aligned with the PISA framework (e.g., civic and ethical engagement, sustainability, and intercultural understanding), yet these aims are distributed across subjects rather than concentrated in a single course (Neubauer and Fernández-Aragón 2025). The documentary analysis of LOMLOE by Neubauer and Fernández-Aragón (2025) shows the four PISA global-competence dimensions echoed in Spain’s compulsory-education standards, but implementation relies on schools and teachers to design authentic learning situations. That can mean variability in whether students experience explicit, participatory global citizenship learning as part of bilingual programmes. This policy–practice gap is consistent with our respondents’ lower expectations around “feeling like global citizens”.

As Porto et al. (2025) claim in their recent study, developing true intercultural citizenship requires going beyond teaching language and intercultural communication skills. The authors argue that while intercultural communicative competence (the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people from other cultures) is crucial, it is not sufficient to foster an active sense of global or intercultural citizenship in learners (Porto et al. 2025). In the context of language education, simply focusing on communicative and cultural skills tends to omit the ethical and civic dimensions needed for students to see themselves as global citizens.

Interpreted within the ICitE framework, the findings obtained in this study highlight that Spanish BE offers opportunities for developing intercultural dispositions (i.e., attitudes, interpreting and relating, discovery and interaction), whereas expectations tied to a broader citizenship identity are less prominent. Since our instrument did not capture explicit work with difficult topics, we treat the lower global civic orientation expectation as consistent with (but not proof of) limited exposure to ethically challenging content in everyday bilingual classrooms. This points to an important direction for curricular development, adding an explicit focus on ethics, empathy, and social action to cultivate intercultural citizenship. In addition, given that bilingual education already advances knowledge, attitudes and skills linked to the OECD’s global-competence construct and ICC, it should be given a more prominent place in discussions of intercultural citizenship education.

This study has several limitations. First, the results rely on self-report questionnaire data capturing students’ expectations and perceptions, which are subjective and can be influenced by social desirability or biases. They are meaningful for understanding engagement intentions, but they are not behavioural evidence. Second, the scope of this study focused on students’ expectations regarding their intercultural competence and orientations that are theorised as prerequisites for intercultural citizenship, rather than on enacted intercultural citizenship. It did not include direct exposure to difficult topics pedagogy, so conclusions about the citizenship component are confined to global civic orientations.

Regarding the study design, the use of a cross-sectional, non-probabilistic sample reflects our intention to provide a “snapshot” of students’ self-perceptions about the benefits of bilingual education rather than to establish causal or longitudinal relationships. The large sample sizes for both bilingual (N = 1488) and non-bilingual (N = 440) students ensured sufficient statistical power for robust group-level comparisons, making the observed differences reliable despite potential limitations in representativeness. These results offer a descriptive overview that can guide future longitudinal or experimental studies. Another important limitation of the study is the non-probabilistic sampling and the self-selection of participating schools, influenced by the incentive of receiving an institutional report. This procedure may introduce selection bias, as schools more interested in promoting BE are likely to be overrepresented. Although the sample included non-bilingual schools and covered all autonomous communities, caution is advised when generalising the findings. Future research should consider stratified probabilistic sampling, weighting analyses, and longitudinal designs to mitigate this bias.

In addition, while the bilingual group is larger than the non-bilingual group, both sample sizes are sufficient for robust statistical comparisons. Even so, readers should consider that the larger bilingual sample may slightly influence variance estimates, and caution is advised when generalising these results to populations with different group distributions.

Despite the inclusion of participants from all autonomous communities and the two autonomous cities, the present study did not analyse regional variation in responses. Future research could examine potential regional differences in intercultural competence expectations to better understand the role of local educational policies and the implementation of bilingual programmes.

Another research avenue for future studies is to explore specific curricular or experiential elements that most effectively support the transition towards ICitE, with particular attention to how students interpret, internalise, and enact global and intercultural citizenship in different educational and sociocultural settings. Comparative studies across regions or programme types, as well as longitudinal approaches following students beyond secondary school, may provide further insight into the long-term impact of bilingual education on intercultural citizenship development.