Teacher language awareness for CLIL in multilingual settings: Insights from across UK and Dutch primary classrooms

Schools are increasingly using content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approaches to education, whereby the teaching of subject content and an additional language occurs in an integrated manner. While language and learning are inextricably linked and the rewards of CLIL many, integrated teaching requires a specialised professional awareness of how an additional language operates and is acquired within content classrooms. However, research focused on teacher language awareness (TLA) for CLIL is still sparse. Moreover, it has focused solely on CLIL teachers’ awareness of the target language, thereby disregarding the teacher plurilingual awareness (TPLA) required for effective CLIL, which is inherently multilingual and increasingly implemented in linguistically diverse settings. This study brings together the expertise of Dutch primary school teachers using CLIL to teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, with the expertise in teaching in multilingual settings of UK teachers supporting English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners. Using a CLIL Teaching Wall activity within interviews, it was possible to gain rich insight into the characteristics of the TLA and TPLA underpinning teachers’ ability to recognise and teach to the language demands of multilingual dual-focused classrooms.

Language is inseparable from learning: children develop language by taking part in conversations about the subject or topic of learning, and becoming knowledgeable on a subject involves becoming competent in the language of this subject. Many children in schools today are learning subject knowledge in a language that differs from the language used at home or in society. This means they are facing the challenge of learning a content subject and a second language at the same time. Schools can aid children in this process by providing integrated language learning support within content lessons, through a teaching approach called Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). However, this requires teachers to have a specialised professional awareness of language, which differs in important ways from that of teachers who teach language as a school subject. Using a CLIL Teaching Wall activity and interviews with UK and Dutch primary school teachers, this research captured teachers’ language awareness underlying decision-making in their multilingual CLIL classrooms. It then combined teachers’ insights with theoretical insights from research, exploring the characteristics of this CLIL teacher professional awareness in detail.