Examining CLIL through a Critical Lens
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Examining CLIL through a Critical Lens Ron Darvin 1 & Yuen Yi Lo 2 & Angel M. Y. Lin 3 Published online: 15 July 2020 # National Taiwan Normal University 2020
Sharing epistemological territory with immersion, content-based instruction (CBI) and English-medium instruction (EMI), content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is an educational approach with a dual focus on language and content [1–3]. Originating in Europe, it has expanded to Asia, Latin America and contexts where English is an additional language, and has been constantly re/interpreted, adapted and extended vis-à-vis theories in bilingual education, genre and register analysis, sociolinguistics, systemic functional linguistics and sociocultural theories of language and literacy development. This special issue contributes to this multi-stranded conversation by examining CLIL as a historically and culturally constructed educational model, circumscribed by power relations and shaped by colluding and conflicting ideologies of language and learning. By offering critical perspectives of CLIL as a social practice, it draws attention to how the debates about its parameters, labels and methods are as much about cultural and political issues as its actual features. In the past decade, there have been CLIL overviews that have called for the pursuit of various research issues ranging from the theoretical, e.g. viewing language and content as one process and bridging learning theories with ideas of discursiveness and performativity [3]; methodological, e.g. engaging with action-research to transfer scholarly insights to professional contexts of education [4] and the pedagogical, e.g. examining assessment methods and teacher preparedness [5]. In a special issue of The Language Learning Journal, Dalton-Puffer and Nikula [6] bring together various studies that examine content learning outcomes and assessment methods, corrective feedback and learner motivation. Responding to what has been regarded as a pendulum * Ron Darvin [email protected] Yuen Yi Lo [email protected] Angel M. Y. Lin [email protected]
1
Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
2
Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
3
Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
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English Teaching & Learning (2020) 44:103–108
shift in CLIL research from enthusiasm (e.g. [7]) to intense critique [8, 9], Cañado’s [10] special issue of Theory into Practice offers guidelines and recommendations regarding characterization, implementation, research and teacher training to address certain gaps. While these earlier CLIL studies examine a range of theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical issues, they have mostly been conducted through descriptive, correlational or interventional frames. What this special issue advances is a critical frame that recognizes how CLIL is continually interpreted and discursively constructed by policymakers and practitioners and remains a perpetual site of struggle. As an integration model,
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