AILA Review - Volume 35, Issue 2, 2022

Recent studies on CLIL have revealed contradictory results regarding its role in enhancing equal opportunities and social inclusion. This special issue draws on the theme of the CLIL ReN symposium at AILA 2021, “CLIL Pedagogy and Greater Fairness, Equity, and Inclusion”, and the papers in this volume address both opportunities and challenges of CLIL in contributing to equity and inclusion. The special issue seeks to question, explore, and understand how CLIL might have the potential or not to contribute to greater equity and access to quality educational provision, with attention to not only the learning of languages, but also of content. (In)equity in CLIL will be addressed through conceptual as well as empirical studies which focus on different contexts (Argentina, Australia, Japan, Spain, and The Netherlands) and different educational levels (primary, secondary, pre-vocational studies, and pre-service teacher education).

Despite efforts to redress the problem of social inequity within education, data reveals the student attainment gap continues to widen on the basis of socioeconomic background, particularly within Anglophone contexts (OECD, 2019; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of ‘cultural capital’ has been one especially powerful concept for understanding the causes of such inequity as it relates to social class, and how entrenched patterns of privilege within institutions, such as schools, value certain forms of cultural capital – and associated ways of knowing, being, and doing – over others. Much of the existing CLIL research on social (in)equity has tended to examine either the impact of programmatic conditions on dis/advantage (e.g., streaming, access; see also Evniskaya & Llinares, this issue), or the role of language for enabling more inclusive instructional practices (e.g., differentiation, scaffolding). Both lines of inquiry have produced valuable insights on how CLIL can contribute to more equitable outcomes, but this paper aims to offer a third line, focusing on how greater equity can be achieved through the conceptualization of culture within CLIL contexts. Informed by Bourdieu’s concept of ‘cultural capital’ which has helped advance class-based understandings of inequity, the paper develops a pedagogic framework that explicitly accounts for culture when there is a simultaneous focus on both language and content, drawing on examples from instructional practice.

This study analyses the implementation of CLIL in two monolingual regions of Spain: Madrid and Andalusia. As a matter of fact, as these two regions have been mostly governed by political parties with contrasting ideologies, this may have affected the way in which CLIL has been implemented. Firstly, this paper will offer a literature review of the outcomes that the CLIL programme has produced in the two regions according to research. Secondly, the implementation of CLIL in each region will be examined by means of a document analysis of the CLIL regulations introduced in the two contexts, on the basis of the following themes: CLIL introduction and development, pupil selection, teacher training and compensation, and the inclusion of other languages. Finally, the discussion will explore whether the different outcomes of CLIL in the two regions may be the result of the ideologies guiding the implementation of the programme and will establish some sociolinguistic principles required to frame bilingual competence in the wider social debate on inequality. The greatest ideological difference observed is pupil selection, which may lead to language poverty in certain layers of society.

This study explores issues of potential (in)equity in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs in bilingual secondary schools in the Madrid region (Spain). Based on their general L2 proficiency, students in grades 7 to 10 are streamed into either High Exposure (HE) or Low Exposure (LE) strands, with different degrees of exposure to CLIL. Although this system ensures that all students in a bilingual secondary school receive CLIL to a certain degree, recent voices have signaled the potential risk of fostering inequality among students by streaming within the program (Fernández-Agüero & Hidalgo-McCabe, 2020; Hidalgo-McCabe, 2020). In this study, we explore classroom interactional practices by one science teacher teaching the same content in both groups (grade 7 HE and LE strands), and the effect of such interactional practices on enhancing (or not) students’ higher order thinking skills and the expression of academic content in the L2 or L1. For the analysis, we developed a multi-layered analytical model which incorporates the construct of cognitive discourse functions (CDFs) (Dalton-Puffer, 2013) and the semantic dimension of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (Maton, 2013, 2020). We find significant differences across the two groups in the use of CDFs and ‘semantic codes’ for knowledge construction and meaning making. More specifically, the results show a more frequent use of the CDF evaluate and a higher rate of semantic density (abstractions) in classroom discourse in the HE strand.

This study examines stakeholders’ views on the streaming of students into one of two strands of differing CLIL exposure (High versus Low) in the transition from primary to secondary in the context of Madrid’s Bilingual Education Program. To this end, three groups of stakeholders – primary school leaders, parents and secondary school teachers – were interviewed so as to gather their perspectives on streaming as pertains to: (1) a high-stakes English language test that determines access to the High- and Low-Exposure strands; and (2) the profiles of students participating in these strands. Findings indicate that school leaders prioritise students’ ongoing language learning progress over the high-stakes context of the test, whilst they acknowledge families’ favourable views of the test. Parents’ affective stances reveal that some students experience a certain degree of anxiety in preparation for the test. In addition, participating in the High- or Low-Exposure strands seems to influence teachers’ perceptions of these students as either high or low achievers. These findings are further discussed in terms of the potential implications of streaming and student selection for (in)equity in CLIL programs.

Since 2006, the Argentinian system of education has included intercultural bilingual education, a type of education across kindergarten, primary, and secondary education that guarantees the indigenous peoples’ right to receive quality and equitable education which preserves and strengthens their cultural practices, language, cosmovision, and ethnic identity in a multicultural society. In the province of Chubut, southern Argentina, the Ministry of Education launched a professional development program targeted at primary school teachers working in small town and rural areas with students ethnically associated to the Mapuche peoples and their language, Mapudungun. The aim of this paper is to examine how a group of four teachers understood and implemented CLIL in relation to ethnic equity and socially just education in a semi-rural area of Chubut. Framed as a case study, data were collected in 2021 and 2022 through group discussions, journal diaries, and arts-based methods. Data came from four primary school teachers as well as the program facilitator. By means of quality content analysis, the findings show teachers’ understanding of CLIL as an inclusive and equitable approach that can help promote ethnic identity and ethnolinguistic vitality.

This study explores the impact of two Service-Learning (SL) projects on student teachers’ preparation and perceptions in relation to literacy teaching in English as a foreign language within CLIL programmes. The projects offered hands-on training in preparing and delivering lessons applying Rose and Martin’s (2012) Reading to Learn (R2L) approach to support children at two Madrid primary schools implementing CLIL with high proportions of at-risk pupils and socioculturally diverse student bodies. One hundred and thirteen undergraduate student teachers specialising in English as a Foreign Language at the Complutense University School of Education participated in the SL projects. The projects’ goals included developing the students’ civic engagement and disposition to gain understanding of the potential of a systematic, evidence-based approach to literacy pedagogy for guiding all pupils to acquire the reading and writing abilities needed for educational success. Data from questionnaires, focus group interviews, and reflective journals were collected and analysed. Student teachers faced the challenges of apprehending and effectively applying the R2L strategies in classrooms characterised by pupils’ widely ranging levels of preparation for reading and writing in English. Their reflections show evolution towards readiness and awareness of the possibilities of adopting proactive measures, such as systematic literacy instruction, in order to ensure the progress of pupils as they face the challenges of CLIL in the context of socioeconomic and educational inequity within classrooms and across schools.

Bilingual education using a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach seems in many contexts to select or attract the more able and more academically-inclined pupils, or only be available to pupils in higher academic secondary streams. Positive effects of CLIL for target language proficiency development may therefore be due in part to this cognitive or academic selection effect. Can the target language skills of pupils with lower scholastic attainment – a group which, in several educational contexts, has less access to CLIL programs – also benefit from the CLIL approach?

This two-year longitudinal quasi-experimental research, part of a larger study, focused on the development of oral proficiency skills of three cohorts of 603 pre-vocational pupils in 25 classes in the Netherlands in both CLIL and non-CLIL programs. Despite the lack of explicit school-based selection procedures for pre-vocational pupils’ participation in CLIL, there were significant differences in favor of the CLIL groups in the initial levels of English oral proficiency, fluency, and Willingness to Communicate. Furthermore, the CLIL pupils showed significantly more growth than the non-CLIL control group in English oral proficiency, but not for fluency or Willingness to Communicate. This positive result for the CLIL group did not appear to be moderated by pupil background variables. Despite the small effect sizes found, these results indicate that the CLIL approach can have a positive effect on the foreign language proficiency of pupils in less academic educational streams.