Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2022

The developmental trajectory of monolinguals has often been used as the benchmark against which the progress of all language learners is assessed and understood, and the abilities of monolinguals are used to define the native-like competence that is widely cited as the ultimate goal for all language learners. Moreover, language learning standards and curricula to guide language teaching and learning in school, as well as frameworks and strategies for assessing language learner outcomes in school, have all been shaped in significant ways by a monolingual bias. In this article, I critically examine assumptions underlying the monolingual bias and review findings from research on preschool and early-school-age learners who acquire language under diverse circumstances. Explanations that go beyond the monolingual bias are proposed for findings of differences between children who learn language under diverse circumstances and monolingual children. I argue that current research supports the view that there are alternative pathways to becoming language competent.

This article traces the historical phases in the conceptualisation of and research on Content-and-language-Integrated Learning in Europe since the 1990s. Following upon early programmatic statements, the first wave of CLIL research concentrated on language learning outcomes. In a second wave, the focus was on descriptions of practice and studies of participant perspectives. More recently, studies have focused on the unique character of CLIL as an educational approach in its own right, not simply as a context of foreign language teaching. The crucial content-language interface is being addressed in research focusing on language and literacy in content curricula and classroom practices. A new CLIL research focus is the development of pedagogical practice through theory-based interventions. In line with the UN sustainable development goal of Quality Education, we identify equity and team work as future challenges and argue that CLIL could be a catalyst for a more collaborative and multidisciplinary approach in education.

Bilingual education programmes are characterised by the use of students’ second/foreign/additional language (L2) as the medium of instruction for content subjects. In many educational contexts, such programmes are implemented by content subject specialists who have not received sufficient training in helping students master content and L2 simultaneously. Professional development is therefore necessary for this group of teachers. One potential professional development model is promoting collaboration between content and L2 teachers in the same school. Previous studies have explored different forms of cross-curricular collaboration, teachers’ attitudes and factors affecting its effectiveness. This paper seeks to extend the current discussion by investigating different models of teacher collaboration, based on a multi-case study of secondary schools adopting English (L2) as the medium of instruction for some or all subjects in Hong Kong. With various sources of data and cross-case comparison, this paper conceptualises a continuum of teacher collaboration in bilingual education programmes.

As CLIL is developing into an established discipline, it is timely to deepen the theorizing of integration of content and language, particularly in CLIL assessment. To illustrate the challenges, a representative example of a high-stakes CLIL biology assessment task in Hong Kong will first be presented. An Integrative Model for CLIL will then be proposed and applied to illuminate the demands of the assessment task and diagnose a sample student performance. The Integrative Model is developed by integrating genre and register theory (Martin & Rose, 2008), Cognitive Discourse Functions (Dalton-Puffer, 2013), thematic patterns theory (Lemke, 1990), Concept-and-Language-Mapping (CLM) Approach (He & Lin, 2019) and translanguaging/trans-semiotizing theories (Garcia & Li, 2014; Lin, 2019). To further illustrate the utility of the Model, a range of possible assessment-for-learning (Black et al., 2003) CLIL task examples designed by the authors will be presented. The article will conclude with implications for CLIL pedagogy and assessment.

Set against a background of societal pressure and preference for English language education in Hong Kong, this paper explores the policy and practice of English medium instruction (EMI) from the perspective of one group of content subject teachers. Grounded in Bakhtin’s dialogism, the paper reports the results of a qualitative study that used in-depth interviews to explore the perspectives and experiences of these teachers as they implement EMI policy in Hong Kong schools. The results reveal the existence of several discourses of EMI in Hong Kong that position the teachers at community, institutional, and professional levels. The results also suggest that the interplay of EMI discourses can offer content subject teachers positions which they regard as undesirable. Suggestions for ensuring that the voices of these teachers are heard within the context of teacher professional development opportunities in EMI settings are considered and implications for future research are discussed.

Integration is a defining feature of two-way bilingual education (TWBE), yet the integrative dimension of TWBE has received relatively little attention. Over time, scholars have raised concerns that the integration of English speakers and speakers of other languages may not effectively support minority students in the program and in fact, reinforce the inequalities that exist outside of the program or school. This paper discusses the rationale for integration and critical issues of integration and equity as they have emerged at the classroom and program level. The authors provide a conclusion proposing ways forward and what is needed to realize the potential of integration as a transformative third space within TWBE.

This paper reports a study carried out in the context of a seminar designed to build teachers’ knowledge of content and language integration for assessment in a bilingual education program in Madrid, Spain. The participants were seven teachers (two primary, five secondary) of English and science (primary), and art, history, Spanish language arts and English (secondary). The teachers were introduced to the concept of cognitive discourse function (CDF) and assessed samples of students’ work expressing the functions define, evaluate, and explore, using comparative judgement. In sharing and justifying their assessments, they articulated the criteria they used to take their decisions. The findings show that participants emphasized content quality over quantity and language form over function. There was also evidence that the concept of CDFs enabled them to express new understandings of the content-language relationship in assessment. The study has implications for building the knowledge base for content and language integrated assessment across CBLE programs.

This retrospective review applies a language socialisation perspective in examining the findings of a four-year research project on Swedish immersion in Finland. Findings from nine sub-studies within the project are reported with a point-of-view from three key actors’ (teachers, students, and parents) language socialisation processes. Results show that a special feature of immersion teacher socialisation is its continuous attention toward the additive multilingual nature of immersion education, which requires sustained attention to multilingual language use and development. Students in Swedish immersion are socialised into the use of multiple languages in school and act as socialisation agents also outside school. They bring the immersion language to their homes and influence the family language use. Immersion may thus have a considerable influence on how majority language speakers self-identify as language users. Altogether, the sub-studies demonstrate that the benefits of immersion education extend well beyond learning success of students.

Indigenous language content-based instruction in the United States and Canada is primarily known as Indigenous language medium or Indigenous language immersion (ILI) education. In spite of huge barriers, it has grown over the past decade. Programs have emerged from concerns about language loss and a desire for language revitalization. Language revitalization takes several generations since it seeks an outcome where the Indigenous language is primary with high, but secondary, proficiency in the nationally dominant language. To establish a trajectory to reach such an outcome, the majority of schooling until high school graduation should be through the Indigenous language. Indigenous language medium schooling also seeks to produce sufficient mastery of academics and English for access to English medium higher education. Where a sufficiently strong model has been implemented, as in Hawaiʻi, those results are beginning to be produced. At present, the models being implemented elsewhere in the two countries are at varying stages of development, with minimal government support.

Within the broader contexts of language maintenance, revitalisation and use, schools have an important role to play in the early transmission of minority or minoritized languages. Through effective classroom-based practices, teachers can offer rich, continuous linguistic experiences for the young people they teach that can lead to long-term, sustained engagement with language over time. How effective a given approach or practice may be in delivering a linguistic outcome in different contexts depends to a large extent on the skills and competence of the teacher involved (Fitzpatrick et al., 2018, p. 59), and the skills and competence of the teacher are usually rooted in their early experiences as student teachers. Initial teacher education (ITE) programmes are therefore central to the delivery of effective classroom-based practices and fundamental in generating autonomous teachers who can explore critically the different pedagogical approaches as they pertain to minority language contexts. This paper provides a comparative overview of the current issues and challenges facing ITE for primary education in two distinct minority language settings, namely Wales and Ireland. Both settings provide Welsh-medium or Irish-medium immersion education, as well as English-medium education offering Welsh or Irish as statutory subjects up to age 16. Both contexts also offer ITE programmes through the medium of Welsh or Irish, catering specifically for those student teachers wishing to teach in immersion settings. Both contexts face a number of shared challenges in terms of the content, design and delivery of an effective ITE programme for the context. We therefore highlight areas in which resources and methodologies could be shared amongst all those involved in ITE where minority language maintenance is a key component of education.

This afterword to the 10th anniversary special issue of the Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education provides a retrospective account of the origins of the journal and the research published in it over the past decade. It also considers future directions in the field in light of the articles showcased in the special issue. The paper begins with a summary of past articles according to program type represented, topic areas, geographic contexts represented, and type of article (i.e., qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods study, or literature review/theoretical discussion). It provides a similar inventory of the special issue articles. The remainder of the afterword discusses four prominent themes that are reflected in the special issue papers. They address the need for (1) continued focus on content and language integration; (2) teacher education and professional development; (3) equity, access, inclusion, and differentiation; and (4) student language use beyond the classroom and school.