Finding
This situation has led to a CLIL conundrum (cf.
Paper
This Issue
Citations: 2
Full textAbstract
This special issue focuses on the innovations and challenges affecting a teaching approach that has enjoyed massive uptake over the past two decades in very diverse educational settings: Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). CLIL is defined as a generic or umbrella term used to refer to “a dual-focussed education approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language” (Marsh & Langé, 2000, p. 2). Considered the European approach to bilingual education, CLIL has grown exponentially in this continent and is also being increasingly embraced in Latin America and Asia. Extremely high hopes have been pinned on this approach as a potential lever for change and success in language learning, and it has been considered “the most important innovation in language teaching in the past 25 years” (De Bot, 2018). Precisely due to its increasing popularity, CLIL has undergone a very interesting evolution, particularly over the course of the past decade. It was initially heralded as the potential lynchpin to tackle the foreign language deficit on the European continent and was seen as a catalyst for change in language teaching. However, after a period of unbridled enthusiasm, a more critical attitude has emerged, calling into question some of the core underpinnings of CLIL and shaking CLIL advocates out of their complacency. In this sense, from the so-called 4 Cs (culture, communication, content, cognition) coined by Coyle (2007), practioners have moved on to the new 4 Cs in the CLIL arena (craze, critique, conundrum, controversy). Indeed, researchers initially underwent a period of CLIL craze, where research on CLIL (e.g. Lorenzo, Casal, & Moore, 2009; Lorenzo, Casal, Moore, & Afonso, 2009) only sung its praises and shone an exclusively positive spotlight on its functioning. The problem with these initial studies is that they presented some, potentially, very serious methodological flaws that could invalidate their results (cf. Pérez Cañado, 2012). From there, the metaphorical pendulum swung violently to the other extreme and researchers entered a phase of intense CLIL critique, where publications dwelled almost exclusively on the negative and pessimistic side of CLIL (cf., Bruton, 2013, 2015, 2017; Paran, 2013). The problem with this second batch of articles is that they were based on unsubstantiated opinions or personal cases, thereby lacking scientific robustness, representativeness, or generalizability. This situation has led to a CLIL conundrum (cf. Pérez Cañado, 2016), where confusion as regards the effectiveness of CLIL has predominated, and has caused researchers to be currently positioned within a CLIL controversy, which is playing itself out in some of the major journals in the field (cf., for instance, ELT Journal, Applied Linguistics, System, or Applied Linguistics Review), where articles are being tossed back and forth between CLIL advocates and CLIL detractors. Intense debate has been sparked off and contradictory opinions have been harbored vis-à-vis pivotal aspects of CLIL characterization, implementation, research, and teacher training, thereby creating the need to Theory Into Practice, 57:163–165, 2018 Copyright © The College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University ISSN: 0040-5841 print/1543-0421 online DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2018.1496758
Authors
M. L. Pérez Cañado
Journal
Theory Into Practice