In recent months I have been working in Spain, Portugal and Switzerland with teachers in primary schools who are language teachers in contexts where they are tasked with teaching an additional or a ‘foreign’ language but do so using CLIL (content and language integrated learning), bilingual or immersion pedagogic approaches. An integrated approach means that teachers are required to link their language teaching to thematic or subject elements of the curriculum so that learners not only learn new language, but that this language is embedded in the new knowledge and understanding of topics or themes which connect the curriculum. Integrated approaches require very careful planning of classroom tasks and activities and their sequences in order to ensure that pupil progression in both conceptual growth and language development is visible. They also usually involve collaboration between teachers, since some of the tasks are not necessarily in the repertoire of language teachers and vice versa. Yet all believe they have a contribution to make to creating a language-rich experience for our young learners.
I wish to highlight three key areas which are attracting a great deal of discussion (and action) on a global scale involving the teaching and learning of language and languages in and across the curriculum – including some contexts which have many synergies with the Scotland. This builds on varied discussion over the last few years about the nature and implementation of integrated approaches to teaching and learning. It is interesting to note that Finland, respected as having a highly successful education system as evidenced by PISA results, has now introduced a phenomenon-based curriculum when one phenomenon (e.g. climate change) is studied across all curricular areas using a problem-based approach for an extended period of time. Globally there is renewed interest in the role of literacies across subjects and languages where some interesting work is being carried out in Australia for example (check out their EAL curricular guidance). Moreover, due to our rapidly changing landscapes and the movement of peoples, our classrooms are rapidly developing as plurilingual and pluricultural communities. This has shifted the role of language and languages in and for learning, reflecting the European Movement for over three decades, for a reconceptualisation of the languages of schooling in order to use those experiences to provide appropriate conditions and experiences to develop global citizens.
With ‘recycled’ attention to using languages across the curriculum (nothing new here- see Bullock’s report in the 1970s), literacies across subjects and languages (hence pluriliteracies) and the need to explore links between first language settings and other languages (e.g. EAL, L1, L2, BSL, Gaelic-medium, MFL), the scene is set for enabling our student teachers and the more experienced teachers who guide them in school, to look closely at the potential of CLIL principles (which also link to immersion/bilingual/embedded approaches for those in Gaelic-medium education) and the way these can guide interdisciplinary learning (IDL) in primary schools (and of course beyond) to provide deeper learning and a balanced language-rich meaningful experience for our pupils. This requires a shift in practices and certainly a shift in how we approach language learning and using across the curriculum. CLIL is complex and needs careful, collaborative design, implementation and evaluation – yet it has now been piloted and implemented into the regular curriculum in many countries across then world including anglophone countries, so that there is evidence of good practices (principles and resources) which can be used and recycled. There are already some outstanding examples of using this approach and Scotland has a key contribution to make in furthering innovative classroom practices. Check out the ECML website (https://pluriliteracies.ecml.at/) and in particular learning resources. In a future blog, I would like to include some practical examples of how student teachers are being prepared for integrated CLIL approaches to interdisciplinary learning across the curriculum.
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