Innovations and Challenges in CLIL Teacher Training

Abstract

This article focuses on a key issue for the sustainability of bilingual education: teacher training for content and language integrated learning (CLIL). It begins by canvassing the main innovations affecting teacher training within the current CLIL panorama in terms of the CLIL teacher training profile and the interesting evolution that research into the topic has undergone. The chief challenges stemming from aforementioned innovations are then examined on 7 main fronts: linguistic competence; methodology; scientific knowledge; organizational, interpersonal, and collaborative competence; and ongoing professional development. Finally, 5 concrete lines of action are proposed to address these niches, illustrated with specific practical examples from diverse educational contexts. The updated research evidence and specific actions presented in this article provide a comprehensive overview of where educators stand and where they need to go in the area of teacher training to guarantee a success-prone implementation of CLIL in the European continent and beyond it.

Additional Resources

1. Lasagabaster, D. & Ruiz de Zarobe, Y. (Eds.). (2010). CLIL in Spain: Implementation, results and teacher training. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the current situation of CLIL implementation across Spain and renders a detailed portrayal of teacher training policies across the country. Especially valuable is the editors’ conclusion, where the main challenges that need to be addressed to continue pushing CLIL forward in the country are identified. The general consensus is that adequate teacher training measures need to be stepped up for a success-prone implementation of this educational approach.

2. Martínez Agudo, J.D. (Ed.) (2014). English as a foreign language teacher education: Current perspectives and challenges. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi.

This volume identifies and foregrounds the key issues that, at present, run through the language education scene, including English as a lingua franca, CLIL, competency-based language teaching, multicultural awareness, or the heightened role of technology. It spans a broad array of topics (including language teacher education models, developing multicultural awareness, or professional identity construction), contexts (affecting all educational levels), and stakeholders (pre- and in-service teachers and teacher trainers).

3. Marsh, D., Pérez Cañado, M.L., & Ráez Padilla, J. (Eds.). (2015). CLIL in action: Voices from the classroom. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

This monograph presents evidence from national and international research projects, governmentally funded pedagogical initiatives, grassroots experiences and investigations, and interinstitutional training programs on how CLIL teacher training is working in action. It explores preservice teacher preparation for CLIL by canvassing existing undergraduate degrees, examines current training for in-service practitioners, and offers guidance to set up new CLIL teacher training initiatives at graduate level.

Notes

¹ CLIL is considered the European approach to bilingual education and is defined as “a dual-focussed education approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language” (Marsh & Langé, 2000, p. 2). The emphasis on both teaching and content points to the very hallmark of CLIL: it involves a “two for one” approach (Lyster, 2007, p. 2), where subject matter teaching is used at least some of the time as a means of increased meaningful exposure to the target language. Although, initially, the prevalent tendency was to distill the core features that differentiate CLIL from other types of immersion approaches and that make it a FL teaching trend in its own right, this reductionist view has recently been called into question, and researchers such as Cenoz, Genesee, and Gorter (2014, p. 243) “argue that attempts to define CLIL by distinguishing it from immersion approaches to L2 education are often misguided.” In this vein, Somers and Surmont (2011), Cenoz et al. (2014), Hüttner and Smit (2014), Cenoz (2015), and Cenoz and Ruiz De Zarobe (2015) expound on the similarities rather than differences between CLIL, immersion, and content-based instruction (CBI), and advocate a more inclusive, integrative, and constructivist stance. Indeed, Cenoz (2015) has recently maintained that the essential properties of CLIL and CBI (use of the L2 as a medium of instruction, societal aims, or the typical type of student) are the same. There are only what she termed accidental differences between both approaches, which are “linked to the specific educational contexts where the programmes take place” (Cenoz, 2015, p. 22). As Cenoz et al. (2014, p. 253) underscored, “Some consider CLIL to be the same as CBI and, thus, immersion, which is clearly a form of CBI” (cf. Pérez Cañado, 2016c for a detailed overview of the similarities and differences among CLIL, CBI, and immersion).

² The studies mentioned in this section and on which the subsequent challenges are based are described in this footnote in terms of research design, methods, and sample so that the reader may better understand the conclusions drawn from them. In Poland, Czura, Papaja, and Urbaniak’s (2009) study reports on the outcomes of a qualitative project coordinated by the National Center for Teacher Training and the British Council, whose aim was to investigate bilingual scheme results throughout the country. It provided an overview of CLIL practice in 19 schools, using classroom observation and interviews with head teachers, students, and coordinators of bilingual streams. In turn, in Italy, two main studies stand out: that by Infante et al. (2009), which polled 11 experienced CLIL teachers through questionnaires and interviews on their trajectory with dual-focused education, and that conducted by Di Martino and Di Sabato (2012), which administered questionnaires to 52 teachers in upper secondary, polytechnic, and vocational schools. Research on teacher training for CLIL is much more conspicuous in Spain. Only one relevant investigation on this topic can be ascertained in bilingual communities: that by Alonso et al. (2008), which gauged stakeholder perspectives on CLIL implementation in the Basque Autonomous Community by using interviews, questionnaires, and diaries. In monolingual communities, research on this issue is much more prolific. In Castile and León, Durán-Martínez and Beltrán-Llavador (2016) administered questionnaires to 151 teachers in 109 infant, primary, and secondary schools. In Madrid, Fernández Fernández et al. (2005) traced teachers’ perceptions through four questionnaires and four semistructured interviews conducted in four different public schools when the bilingual project was just starting out. Three years later, Pena Díaz and Porto Requejo (2008) followed up this study with two further questionnaires. The first of them probed teachers’ opinion on bilingual education and identified their main needs; the second inquired into their opinion of the grassroots implementation of CLIL. Richer data was obtained by Fernández and Halbach (2011), who polled 56 teachers in 15 schools once more using questionnaires. Finally, Cabezuelo Gutiérrez and Fernández Fernández (2014) offered a more updated perspective of the evolution of teacher training in the bilingual program of this community by administering an online questionnaire to 17 in-service teachers in 12 different schools. Last, in Andalusia, Rubio Mostacero (2009) conducted needs analysis interviews with 20 teachers in four secondary schools in the province of Jaén. Cabezas Cabello (2010) expanded this to over 100 teachers and 30 coordinators in 30 primary and secondary schools in all eight Andalusian provinces, whom he also interviewed. Lancaster (2016) then carried out a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats analysis through the administration of questionnaires to 692 students and 53 teachers in the province of Jaén. Finally, Pérez Cañado (2016a, 2016b, 2017) worked, respectively, with 241 in-service teachers (language teachers, content teachers, and teaching assistants); 706 preservice teachers, in-service teachers, teacher trainers, and educational administration coordinators; and 2,633 teachers, students, and parents across the whole of Europe. This author employed self-administered and group-administered questionnaires, with data, investigator, and location triangulation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, under Grant FFI2012-32221, and by the Junta de Andalucía, under Grant P12-HUM-23480.

Notes on contributors

María Luisa Pérez Cañado

María Luisa Pérez Cañado is Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology of the University of Jáen, Spain, where she is also Vicedean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education.