CLIL Teacher training and teachers’ choices: exploring planned language use in the Australian context

ABSTRACT

The term ‘CLIL’ has been used in Australia for over a decade, and the approach has helped to invigorate languages education in both primary and secondary schools. In particular, the flexibility of CLIL has led to a range of teachers accessing CLIL training: from teachers in structured programs where schools have committed to organisational change, to teachers driving initiatives where schools have accepted, but not substantially committed to, initiatives. However, although the flexibility has helped more teachers and schools experiment with putting a target language across the curriculum, we propose that the significant role context plays in the implementation of CLIL has implications both for teacher training and for ways in which languages (the target language and the dominant language) are used in the classroom. To illustrate this, we draw on data we collected from six different qualitative studies investigating a total of five primary schools and four secondary schools across the two Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria.

KEYWORDS:

• CLIL
• teacher training
• L1 use
• planned language use
• Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Data were drawn from six different qualitative studies, and a full account of data collection is beyond the scope of this article. A broad overview is provided to give some context to the examples given in the discussion.

2 In the larger schools there were 4 or 5 bilingual teachers plus up to 6 classroom teachers per year group who also responded to the survey. In the smallest school all teachers in the school (n=6) participated in the program to some extent. The survey captured data from both bilingual teachers and their collaborating classroom teachers.