This reports is about content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in multilingual primary classrooms. While in theory CLIL offers many opportunities for inclusive education in multilingual settings, questions remain as to how integrated language teaching can be realised, and what teacher knowledge is required for this. This research used a CLIL Teaching Wall activity and interviews with UK and Dutch primary school teachers to capture teacher knowledge underlying decision-making in actual multilingual classrooms. The report presents a framework of CLIL teacher knowledge that emerged from this work.
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This chapter explores issues encountered by beginning CLIL teachers in making sense of and applying guidelines aimed at teachers when designing learning experiences for CLIL. After summarising current guidelines, the authors draw on Coyle et al.’s (2010) 4Cs model, an additional C for collaboration and developments conceptualising integration and disciplinary literacy, to reflect on their own experiences as CLIL teacher educators in The Netherlands. They discuss how principles behind CLIL can be made relatable to both content and language teachers. They argue that, in taking a holistic, literacy-based view of subject teaching, teachers from both linguistic and non-linguistic disciplines are positioned as experts in all aspects of their subject, and can enter into collaboration on an equal footing with each other. Challenges remain, including a need for cross-disciplinary collaboration between language specialist and subject specialist teacher educators.
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This study analyze data from three national contexts in which teachers worked with the same teaching materials and inquiry classroom activities, investigating teachers’ use of strategies to promote interaction and scaffolding when participating in a professional development program. The data material is collected from three case studies from the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, respectively. Each case is from a teaching unit about green plants and seed sprouting. In one lesson in this unit, students were involved in planning an experiment with sprouting seeds, and this (similar) lesson was videotaped in three national settings. The main research question is, as follows: How do primary teachers use questions to scaffold conceptual understanding and language use in inquiry science activities? The data analysis shows that teachers ask different kind of questions such as open, closed, influencing and orienting questions. The open, orienting questions induce students to generate their own ideas, while closed orienting and influencing questions often scaffold language and content-specific meaning-making. However, both open, closed, orienting and influencing questions can scaffold student language and conceptual understanding. Often, teacher questions scaffold both language content-specific meaning-making at the same time. The study shows the subtle mechanisms through which teachers can use questions to scaffold student science literacy and thereby including them in classroom interaction.
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