Coteaching in a science-CLIL classroom: changes in discursive interaction as evidence of an English teacher’s science-CLIL professional identity development

ABSTRACT

Multilingual and multicultural societies in Europe pose new challenges for schools and have led to the expansion of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach to foreign language teaching. English teachers in Catalan primary schools frequently face the challenge of integrating science teaching with foreign language teaching. This paper analyses how an English primary teacher’s performance as a science-CLIL teacher evolves by means of coteaching with science teachers, and relates changes in her performance to the development of a science-CLIL teacher professional identity. An analytical framework has been constructed that includes: (1) a science-CLIL teacher professional identity model, and (2) a model that characterises collaborative practice in a cotaught science-CLIL classroom. The results indicate that coteaching is a powerful strategy for promoting discursive changes that can be considered evidence of the English teacher’s science-CLIL teacher professional identity development through: (a) challenging her English teacher sub-identity to embrace multilingualism in the classroom; (b) developing a science teacher sub-identity that allows her to participate successfully as a science teacher and therefore to share leadership when teaching science, and (c) constructing a CLIL-teacher sub-identity that is more capable of balancing English teaching and science teaching.

KEYWORDS:

• Coteaching
• science teaching
• teacher professional identity
• discursive interaction
• CLIL

Acknowledgements

We want to show our deepest gratitude to the teachers who generously opened the doors of their classrooms and accompanied us for more than 3 years.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use the term ‘Foreign Language’ instead of ‘Second Language’ or other more inclusive terms for two reasons. First, a foreign language is in our context the 3rd or 4th Language for most of the pupils as there are 2 official spoken languages in our region and a 3rth language could be the mother tongue of some pupils due to their family origins. Second, it is the term used in the European curricular documents about CLIL and in the Spanish curriculum.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [grant number PGC2018-096581-B-C21 and EDU2015-66643-C2-1-P]; Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca [grant number 2014SGR1492].