Università di Pisa
Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica
CORSO DI LAUREA MAGISTRALE IN LETTERATURE E
FILOLOGIE EURO-AMERICANE
ELABORATO FINALE
Voices from the classroom
A multi-faceted analysis of students' and teachers' perceptions of
CLIL in Tuscan secondary schools
CANDIDATO
Eleonora Cerri
RELATORE
Chiar.ma Prof.ssa Belinda Crawford
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Table of Contents...1
Introduction...4
CHAPTER 1 - The history of CLIL...9
1.1 CLIL: why?...10 1.1.1 Theoretical background...13 1.1.2 Legislative background...18 1.2 CLIL: what?...21 1.2.1 The 4-Cs' model...21 1.2.2 Bloom's taxonomy...23
1.2.3 Cummins' iceberg theory...26
1.3 CLIL: how?...27
1.3.1 Educational strategies...28
1.3.2 Latest trends...29
CHAPTER 2 - CLIL in practice...33
2.1 CLIL in Germany...34
2.1.1 Organization of CLIL in the German school system...35
2.1.2 The case of North Rhine-Westphalia...37
2.2 CLIL in Spain...38
2.2.1 Organization of CLIL in the Spanish school system...39
2.2.2 The case of the Community of Madrid...41
2.3 CLIL in Italy...43
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2.3.2 The case of Lombardy and general results...48
2.4 Reflection on the efficacy of CLIL...50
CHAPTER 3 - Methodology...53 3.1 Introduction...53 3.2 Data sources...55 3.2.1 The questionnaire...55 3.2.2 The interview...57 3.3 Data collection...60
3.3.1 Lower secondary schools...61
3.3.2 Upper secondary schools...63
CHAPTER 4 - Results and discussion...65
4.1 Collective results from questionnaires...69
4.1.1 Technologies and CLIL...79
4.2 Students' opinions in lower secondary schools...81
4.3 Students' opinions in upper secondary schools...85
4.3.1 Upper secondary school typologies...87
4.3.2 Modular and annual CLIL...89
4.4 A comparative analysis...93
4.5 Results from the interviews...96
4.5.1 Teachers' reflections on CLIL...102
4.6 Insights from observations of CLIL events...106
3 CHAPTER 5 - Conclusion...114 References...120 Appendix A...130 Appendix B...134 Appendix C...135 Appendix D...137 Appendix E...138 Appendix F...139 Appendix G...140
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Introduction
Content and Language Integrated Learning (also known and used in this study with the acronym CLIL) is an innovative educational approach in which a foreign language is used as a medium in the teaching and learning of non-language contents. It is based on a dual-focused methodology that promotes the learning of both content and language through the use of a language other than the learners' mother tongue. The term CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) was introduced for the first time in 1994 by the Australian professor David Marsh, an expert on multilingualism and bilingual education since the 1980s (Marsh, 2012).
The history of CLIL varies from one country to another. It takes inspiration from situations of bilingual areas, in which competence in the second language is central in everyday life: this is the case for example of Canadian citizens. The educational context of Canada has been studied to analyze a reality in which students are immersed in a completely bilingual education system (Swain & Lapkin, 1982). The CLIL-based approach has attracted a great deal of attention in Europe as well, where this methodology has become widespread in numerous countries. Chronologically, countries with minority languages or with several official languages such as Belgium, Luxemburg and Malta have been the first to introduce CLIL-type provisions (Eurydice, 2006). More generally, most countries have introduced legislation to establish CLIL since the beginning of the 1990s.
From the early years of the 20th century, European societies have seen considerable changes in their organization and everyday life, reflecting consequently new demands for change in the educational systems to prepare future European citizens. Innovative technologies, economic trade and the chance to be connected across borders without regard to distances have developed a globalized world. A world that witnesses every day a higher percentage of migratory movements has increased the need for language and
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cultural knowledge and comprehension. This has political as well as social consequences, making it necessary for the citizens of this boundless world to possess refined communicative competences. This necessity has been evidenced by the European Community since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which marked a new stage in the process of European integration, with particular attention to education and languages. A few years later, another significant step was made in the direction of language learning with the 1995 Education Council Resolution stressing the importance of the knowledge of foreign languages and the central role of the CLIL approach within the education system to develop communication skills.
CLIL's dual-focused methodology can be associated with various foreign languages as a means of instruction. However, in the great majority of countries, the most widespread foreign target language used is English. English has an increasingly central role as the most influential international language (Dalton-Puffer, 2007), as well as an undeniable impact on the global economy. Through globalization, urbanization and the Internet, English has spread its influence and it is progressively becoming a basic skill needed not only in international business, but also in nearly every context where two people do not share a language. Therefore,English proficiency is a necessary skill today. In the school sector, English study is expanding in response to the centrality of this language internationally, which has brought a change within the education systems in the last two decades. English teaching theory increasingly emphasizes the end goal of the language learning as fluency, rather than grammatical accuracy and memorization, making the CLIL approach a basic tool to practice communicative skills and improve this core language.
Under these premises, I considered it interesting to analyze the development of the CLIL approach in my country. Studying foreign languages at the university and therefore believing in the utility and necessity of knowing at least one foreign language like English, I was fascinated by the ideas underlying the concept of CLIL. Turning theory into practice in an environment such as the school classroom could be a first, effective step to
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develop decisive competences in the knowledge of foreign languages. I came to this belief on the basis of personal experiences I had in learning non-linguistic subjects in a language that was not my mother tongue (i.e., English). In fact, I went to Germany with the Erasmus project in 2014, where I had the opportunity to attend courses in which a language that was not my mother tongue was inevitably used. However, contrarily to what I expected, not all courses at the German university were in German. The other language used was generally English, and I noticed that students of the place did not have great difficulty in understanding and participating in the lessons. I attended a course about the history of the city where I was (i.e., Göttingen), and a course about the language of gestures in deaf-mute people. People followed with interest and attention the courses and they participated with questions and comments. Personally, I was interested in these lessons not only because of the subjects, but also because I noticed that I was learning a wider lexicon of English while focusing on contents that did not deal with the linguistic aspect of the foreign language, as I was used to in my university. In particular, it was easier for me to understand the lessons of the 'gestures course' rather than history, mainly because of the use of gesture that accompanied speech. This was one of the reasons that led me think about this approach in the education system, and the difference in learning difficulties depending on the subject taught in a foreign language. I started there to wonder whether the Germans' capability to speak English fluently was due not only to the similarity of the two languages in pronunciation and other aspects related to their common origin as Germanic languages, but also to this approach in the educational systems (at least at the university as I could experience), where the language of education is not necessarily the students' mother tongue.
I have always been interested in education and in the possibilities that school systems should offer students to practice what they learn, especially when dealing with a foreign language. Being Italian, I do know that a high proficiency level is not widespread in this country: the latest ranking by Eurostat Statistics Explained (2016) showed a high distribution of people who
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do not know a foreign language in Italy (ca. 34%), with specific reference to the ability of communicating in an efficient way. This may be partially due to the Italian high school education system, which is biased toward a theoretical knowledge of a subject rather than its practical application. This is true also for the learning of foreign languages: the time dedicated to the learning and teaching of English at high school, for example, focuses almost exclusively on grammar and literature.
The increasing importance of communicative skills in foreign languages in general (and in English in particular), and the European attention to the vocational training of conscious European citizens have encouraged a deep analysis of the education system that involves Italy as well. The CLIL approach can have positive long-term effects within the Italian population. In Italy, CLIL was institutionalized in 2010 with a ministerial decree which stated that in the last year of high schools and from the third year on of linguistic high school systems at least one non-language subject should be taught in a foreign language. Considering that Italian teachers' point of view regarding the pro and cons of the CLIL approach has already been investigated in a research promoted by the Italian Education Ministry (MIUR, 2016), I originally decided to focus my attention on students' feedback about this new approach to learning. To fulfill this aim, I contacted different schools in Tuscany, in five of which (i.e., two lower secondary schools and three upper secondary schools) I had the opportunity to carry out a survey with questionnaires administered to the students of the CLIL classes and brief interviews with the CLIL teachers of each class, therefore collecting also these teachers' perceptions of CLIL. These data were integrated with insights on the world of CLIL and its practices, gained through the participation in meetings which were organized in three Tuscan schools in the year 2017-2018. The aim of this study is to understand the students' and teachers' point of view about the CLIL approach, its strengths and weaknesses, focusing in particular on possible differences in the difficulty level, depending on the type of foreign language used, the non-language subject (e.g., scientific or literary), or age factors, in order to gain a better
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understanding of this dual-focused approach within the Italian educational system.
The first two chapters introduce the theoretical background of the topic, respectively focusing on the history of CLIL (Chapter 1) and on the provision of CLIL in Europe (chapter 2). This second chapter provides a brief overview of two European examples of CLIL practices (i.e., Germany and Spain) where this approach has been widely used, and then focusing on the case of Italy. Chapter 3 illustrates the methodology of this survey, in particular explaining how data have been collected. The core chapter of the study (Chapter 4) presents the results of the analysis of questionnaire, interviews, and meetings dedicated to CLIL, which represent the data sources of this study. Finally, Chapter 5 concludes the study reflecting on what emerged from students' and teachers' perceptions of CLIL and on possible changes to improve the practice of CLIL in the Italian school system.
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1. The history of CLIL
The use of a language other than the learners' native language as a means of instruction is an old practice. In fact, if we consider the basic concept of teaching a subject in a foreign language, we can trace the roots of this methodological approach to the early stages of education, when Latin, being the language of the Church, was broadly used to teach any subject to scholars speaking vulgar languages. In Europe, the learning of foreign language at different levels has always been considered a core element to contribute to the successful construction of Europe. However, it was not until the 1990s that concrete discussions in the EU on the importance of new teaching methods to answer the increasing need of knowing other languages became central (Eurydice, 2006). The need to implement the learning and use of a second language in education has traditionally been perceived in specific contexts of bilingual countries or regions with minority languages to be protected, in which the question around the acquisition of language competences was more urgent. This is the case, for example, of Canada with its bilingual status of French and English coexisting in the national linguistic reality.
In Canada, the Official Languages Act of 1969 recognized English and French as the official languages of the country, therefore promoting the teaching of French to English-speaking Canadian citizens through ad-hoc immersion programs as already incepted in 1965. These programs involved students from the primary to the upper secondary education levels who spent a large part of the school day studying the regular school curriculum through the medium of the French language in courses taught by native speakers (Lambert & Tucker, 1972). This type of immersion educational approach allowed teachers to develop fluency in an initially unknown language through content-based teaching in the second language, and it is still used nowadays in Canada as well as in other bilingual countries (e.g., Australia, Finland, Spain, the United States).
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This type of immersion education can be considered as a starting point for the development of the European CLIL approach: in both cases students at school are taught non-language subjects in another prestigious language, which is not their mother tongue. What crucially differs, however, is the fact that the language of instruction in immersion programs is the other official language of the country and the teachers concerned are native speakers of this language.In CLIL, instead, the language used is a foreign language, which is generally already part of the school curriculum and which is integrated with the learning of a content subject. The following paragraphs aim at providing an introduction to the field of CLIL by answering three main questions concerning this theme: Why? What? How?. The first paragraph (CLIL: why?) focuses on the epistemological and normative roots that constitute the basis of CLIL; the answer to the second question (CLIL: what?), presents an overview of the main conceptual frameworks of CLIL; the third and closing question (CLIL: how?) deals with some considerations on how the CLIL theory should be put into practice and what are the latest trends in this educational method, in particular concerning new technologies.
1.1 CLIL: why?
The necessity of up-to-date educational approaches has been perceived and widely investigated in the last few years. The Italian educationalist Paolo Ferri represents an example of one of those researchers who analyzed the new way of learning of digital natives. In a chapter of his volume (Ferri, 2011: 95-128) with a meaningful subtitle A scuola mi annoio (i.e., I get bored at school), he underlines the inability of the traditional educational methods to make the most of the twenty-first-century students' capacities. In particular, educational institutions face a double challenge to form the students of today: on the one hand they should introduce at school the same technological tools with which digital natives grow up and with which they start to learn as children; on the other hand, a need for didactic reconsideration has become central to promote the learning and the cognitive development of today's scholars. In this sense,
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CLIL approach can be one of the possible innovative method to use to answer both these requests by offering an innovative way of teaching through the use of various means (i.e., both technological and traditional, see section 1.3.2). Different technological devices (e.g., LIM, online platforms, videos, PowerPoint presentations) have been recently introduced at school. In Italy, for example, investments in this field have been allocated since 2008 with the Piano Nazionale Scuola Digitale. Teachers appreciate and use technologies, but their application within the classroom is rarely concretized. The usefulness of adopting technologies to renovate teaching methods and attract students' attention is recognized by teachers, but sometimes they prefer to rely on the traditional way of teaching based on textbooks, especially when not properly trained for using these technological devices for educating digital natives. With the increasing interest in CLIL and the methodological training that teachers received to become CLIL teachers, the experimentation of this educational approach incentivized the use of technologies at school on the basis of the methodological strategies learnt in the training courses for CLIL. As emerged from the interviews collected for this study, after experiencing CLIL and perceiving students' interest and participation in the lesson, teachers affirmed that they were motivated to extend the teaching methodology learnt with CLIL to traditional teaching as well (see section 4.1.1).
CLIL is an innovative approach introduced to teach in a globalised world that faces rapid changes everyday. An array of advancements that occurred in the last century in technology, transport, communication, made interconnections on a global scale possible and also affected our way of living. In particular, technological discoveries and the development of digital technologies rapidly led to a generation gap between the so-called digital natives (people born during or after the rise of digital technologies) and digital immigrants (the ones born before the advent of digital technologies) that make it necessary to develop new methods in education to better involve the students of today (Prensky, 2001).
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Students of the twenty-first century have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using tools of the digital age, which were not present before. As a result, their way of thinking and processing information is fundamentally different from their predecessors: De Kerckhove (1991, 2010) defines digital natives' cognitive schemes as brainframes, which developed in connection with technology. Technologies and techniques of cultural transmission shape brain functions, modifying the perception of the world, behaviors, beliefs, and social constructs. According to this Canadian sociologist, three different types of brainframes developed under the influence of the new media: alphabetic, video, and cybernetic. They influence the mental organization of youngsters and consequently change the way they interpret the surrounding reality:
the alphabetic brainframe, being no longer based on the sequentiality of the alphabetic order, stresses the acceleration and fragmentarity of time rather than its linearity;
the video brainframe reduces the chances to pause upon messages in communication, changing the way we focus our attention on concepts;
the cybernetic brainframe was developed in connection with the use of the Internet and facilitates the interconnection of thinking (De Kerckhove, 2010).
With such cognitive schemes, today's youngsters are used to receiving information very rapidly (alphabetic brainframe), they like to parallel process and multi-task (video brainframe), they function best when networked, and they are predispose to a reticularity and a multiplicity of actions and thoughts (cybernetic brainframe). They essentially see the world in a new way, and research in the field of psychology and pedagogy have proved to be helpful for digital immigrant teachers to reinterpret the role of education and renew its methodologies.
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The CLIL methodology was introduced in Europe in the 1990s to face the new needs of the changing students and of modern societies. The impact of computerization alone is constantly making the world a smaller place in which the benefits of being able to speak different languages are becoming more and more obvious. As an innovative educational approach, CLIL traces back its theoretical roots to the fields of pedagogy, psychology, and linguistics. In particular, the understanding of how people learn in relation to the mental structure and its functioning represents a starting point in the analysis of the theory behind CLIL (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010). The fundamental approaches that underpin CLIL can be found in the constructivist and socio-cultural perspectives on learning as developed by two important psychologists: Jean Piaget and Lev Semënovič Vygotskij.
According to the constructivist psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980), learning is a process of construction. The individual uses cognitive schemes1 to organize external elements, therefore constructing his/her intelligence through active experiences. Two cognitive processes help children - as well as adults - to develop their learning: a first process of assimilation, in which the individual uses an already acquired cognitive scheme to interpret a new event or to use a new object, and a second process of accommodation through which a scheme is changed when not useful in interpreting or interacting with the external environment (Piaget, 1926). As a consequence of this concept of learning, the process for acquiring knowledge is bound to the cognitive development of the individual and to a proper stimulus to apply the processes of assimilation and accommodation and internalize a new content.
The other fundamental theoretical approach to learning was developed by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotskij (1896-1934), who considered learning as a process of evolution. Human actions are seen as the main means for acquiring
1 Driscoll (1994) (as cited in Riva, 2014: 68) defines cognitive schema (schemata) as the
prototypical proprieties developed by the mind on the basis of past experiences that help us to organize and interpret new information, understand events and guide future actions.
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knowledge. More specifically, reflecting on the content and results of an experienced action, people build their knowledge of the world, and this knowledge is the source for creating expectations and the desire to know more that drives future human actions. One of the core characteristics of human activity is that it is shared with others; it is the result of social relations. According to this psychological point of view, learning is a collaborative process. Considering that humans are basically social beings, they learn from collective activities, cooperating and communicating with others. The concept of learning as a social activity can also be found at the basis of the Community Language Learning approach (CLL), originated by the psychology professor of Loyola University in Chicago, Charles Curran, according to whom optimal language learning comes from social interaction (La Forge, 1971). The humanistic approach of CLL views learners and teachers as a community in which the learner is not thought of as a student, but as a client, and the teacher as a counselor. By changing the relationship between teachers and students, CLL was designed to lower the anxiety of foreign language learners in educational contexts and to promote group dynamics (Nagaraj, 2009).
Focusing in particular on the learning and development of school-age children, Vygotskij identified the so-call zone of proximal development (Vygotskij, 1997), as a zone of activity in which a person can produce with assistance what they cannot produce alone. It represents the distance between the actual development level of the child as determined by independent problem solving, and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. It is through the child's experiences of participating in activities with others that the structures and contents of mental life develop. In this sense, the learning and development of the child's higher mental functioning is the result of collaborative processes and social functioning.
Under these premises, the American psychologist Jerome Bruner (1915-2016), considering the collaborative and constructivist aspect of learning in connection with the didactic process, theorized the scaffolding method (Wood,
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Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Scaffolding situations are those in which the learner gets assistance or support to perform a task beyond his or her own reach if pursued independently when ‟unassisted” (Wood et al., 1976: 90), a concept that clearly takes inspiration from Vygotskij's idea of the zone of proximal development. Pea (2004) identifies three proprieties for how such assistance functions for the learner:
1. channeling and focusing attention on the assistant's activity to imitate it and make a first step towards learning;
2. modeling and reproducing the previous action observed under adult guidance;
3. fading, which represents the last step of scaffolding in which a gradual degree of autonomy is acquired.
All these psychological and pedagogical approaches underline the importance of interaction and cooperation in developing knowledge and in facilitating the process of learning. Human beings are social beings who, as Paul Watzlawick (1967: 51) stated, ‟cannot not communicate”. The centrality of communication in everyday situations, the importance that studies have posed on interaction for mental development and learning at any age, and the urgent necessity of knowing at least one foreign language have been the catalyst elements that increased the interest in and the success of CLIL in Europe. The CLIL methodology tries to recreate the naturalness of the environment around students who could perceive the classroom as an environment where cooperative learning can take place, as well as a learning process that results from practical experience (i.e., learning by doing). All of this is applied in CLIL for the teaching and learning of a non-linguistic subject through the use of a foreign language that is simultaneously acquired. It follows that this approach requires a systematic understanding of the principles behind learning and mental development in general as discussed above, as well as the principles of language teaching and learning (Nikula, Dalton-Puffer, & Llinare, 2013).
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Focusing on language and the manner in which learners become proficient in a language has been studied since the middle of the twentieth century. Different views developed in connection with the learning of L1 (the native language) and L2 (second or foreign language). A noteworthy approach to the L1 acquisition theory refers to Skinner's behaviorist view (Skinner, 1957), which purported that language is behavior and therefore it is learnt as other human behaviors through a sequence of stimulus-response-reinforcement. This approach traced the basis for a method that considered language learning as a mechanical process, in which the learner should be guided by pattern drills to avoid errors. However, this method proposed a type of language learning that is merely passive memorization and repetition of commands, therefore restricting the space for creative expressions. This approach could avoid what was feared by the behaviorists: the fossilization of errors in the language learnt. Taking distance from this view, the American linguist Noam Chomsky saw errors in the learning of a language (with special reference to the L1) as a creative and spontaneous process of the discovery of language rules. In his famous review of Skinner's work (Chomsky, 1959), he argued that behaviorism cannot provide sufficient explanation for children's language learning, especially because the processes of imitation and stimulus-response fail to explain how people come to produce sentences which they never heard before. According to the innatist view of Chomsky, children have an inherited ability to learn any human language, because they are endowed with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) at birth. The LAD is understood as a module of child's brain which encodes the major principles common to languages and grammatical structures. When exposed to a proper input, the child activates this device to acquire new language rules. From this basic assumption, an other key American linguist, Stephen Krashen, developed the Second Language Acquisition Theory (Krashen, 1981).
Krashen's theory (1981, 1982) represents a turning point in the field of language teaching and learning that has undoubtedly given rise to the popularity of CLIL. The merit of this American linguist lies in his five
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hypotheses for the theoretical foundation of second language acquisition (the Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, the Natural Order Hypothesis, the Monitor Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis and the Affective Filter Hypothesis), 2 and the consequent delineation of effective teaching techniques (Krashen, 1985). Krashen made a fundamental distinction between the acquisition and the learning of a second language, stressing the importance of acquiring a language instead of just learning it. Krashen argued that speaking is a result of acquisition and not the reverse (Krashen, 1985: 80), in the sense that speech is the result of building competence via comprehensible input. In Krashen's view, a comprehensible input is a set of structures that goes a bit beyond our current level of competence. In particular, in second language acquisition, a comprehensible input (i+1) contains language with unacquired grammar that the learner understands thanks to extra-linguistic information, his knowledge of the world, and his previously acquired linguistic competence. For the input to be acquired, however, another element is necessary as argued in the Affective Filter Hypothesis, especially when thinking about education and acquisition at school and its environment. In fact, in the acquisition of second languages, a comprehensible input is a necessary element, but it is also essential for the learner to have his/her mind 'open' to the input. The affective filter in Krashen's words is a mental block that, when up, does not allow the input to reach the Language Acquisition Device, as observed in Chomsky, and therefore prevents the learner from increasing the level of language acquisition. The filter is likely to be up when the acquirer lacks motivation or self-confidence, or feels anxiety; on the contrary, the filter is down when the learner is not concerned with the possibility of failure in language acquisition. Krashen suggested that the filter is lowest when the acquirer is so involved in the message he/she is trying to convey that he 'forgets' about the difficulties of speaking a second language and does not feel the pressure of not making mistakes on the form level (Krashen, 1982).
2 In this paper, I focus my attention on three of these hypotheses: the Acquisition-Learning
distinction, the Input and the Affective Filter Hypothesis, which are of main interest in relation to CLIL theoretical background.
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Under all these premises, CLIL represents an opportunity for youngsters to effectively acquire second/foreign languages at school by allowing them to practice what they learn while they are learning it, and to use another language naturally. Considering that the CLIL approach stresses the teaching of a content subject through the use of a foreign language, students soon forget about the language and only focus on the learning topic, lowering their affective filter and therefore being 'open-minded' for acquiring comprehensible inputs. However, CLIL has represented a new and motivating challenge for both teachers and students since its introduction in the European educational system. Of special interest in this sense are the considerations of sociologists such as Edgar Morin and Zygmunt Bauman. Morin (1999) stresses the importance of rethinking today's education and thought, in order to give students the skills to contextualize knowledge. By bringing together different types of knowledge (conceptual and linguistic), the CLIL methodology educates youngsters towards a complex thought and allows them to have ‟a well-done head instead of a full head” (Morin, 1999: 16-22). A full head has an accumulated set of knowledge with no utility; a well-done head is the one to be pursued, in which general knowledge is organized and connected with other fields to solve problems, as represented in the CLIL methodology, which integrates different subjects (content subject and foreign language) to target an interconnection of multiple knowledge. According to Bauman (2000), in a liquid society where isolation, fading of certainties, and globalization make the individual feel disoriented, the role of education has become more and more influential for instructing students towards complexity, and developing future and conscious citizens of the world with well-done heads.
1.1.2 Legislative background
The acronym CLIL is a term introduced by Marsh in 1994 to describe all types of provision in which a second language (a foreign, regional, or minority language) is used to teach non-language subjects. Attaching the same importance to both the subject matter and the language in which it is taught, this method allows the promotion of language learning that has become an
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essential part in the successful construction of Europe. In this perspective, subjects and languages are combined to offer students a better preparation for life in Europe, in which mobility has become widespread and skills in foreign languages are more and more requested. The discussion of language learning in European institutions led to the realization of the need to explore innovative teaching methods, which then corresponded to a series of recommendations and directives of the European Union to help educate future EU citizens.
CLIL legislative backgrounds can be traced back to the Maastricht Treaty (1992), which stressed the importance for the Community to contribute to the development of quality education, in particular through the teaching of the languages of the Member States (Maastricht, 1992: 47). However, a meaningful and effective step towards CLIL provision was taken in 1995, first with the council resolution (March, 1995), then with the White Paper (December, 1995). The emphasis was posed on promoting qualitative improvements in the Union's education for the knowledge of languages, in order to enhance communication skills. In the White Paper, the European Commission focused its attention on education and training, underlining the need to encourage the learning of at least two foreign languages starting from the early stage of nursery school (White Paper, 1995: 13). Proficiency in several Community languages began to be considered as a precondition for European citizens to benefit from opportunities offered by working and living in environments characterized by different cultures. Moreover, learning another language opens the mind, stimulates intellectual agility, and expands people's cultural horizons.
The advantages and necessity of learning foreign languages gained increasing importance within the European Union, as the European Year of Languages of 2001 revealed. This event certainly helped to draw attention to the fact that the promotion of language learning and linguistic diversity may be achieved through a wide variety of approaches, including a CLIL provision. Since 2003, the CLIL methodology has been considered an innovation in education that could represent a major contribution to the Union’s language learning goals of
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promoting language learning and linguistic diversity, as cited in the Action Plan that the Commission launched in 2003 to define specific objectives and actions to be implemented between 2004 and 2006. It was in 2006 that the recommendations of the European Parliament and of the Council defined eight competences to be provided through lifelong learning as a key measure in Europe's response to globalization3. The second of these key competences set out by the Reference Framework is of great importance for the CLIL approach: communication in foreign language. The recommendation states:
Communication in foreign languages is based on the ability to understand, express and interpret concepts, thoughts, feelings, facts and opinions in both oral and written form [...] Essential skills for communication in foreign languages consist of the ability to understand spoken messages, to initiate, sustain and conclude conversations and to read, understand and produce texts appropriate to the individual's needs. Individuals should also be able to use aids appropriately, and learn languages also informally as part of lifelong learning (European Parliament and the Council, 2006: 5-6)
The CLIL methodology has been introduced in the educational system of Europe to effectively improve language competences and to widen the curriculum of European students. CLIL offers the opportunity to go beyond the acquisition of basic structures of a language (i.e., grammar, phonology, vocabulary) by extending the time spent for language learning in the classroom and integrating the foreign language with content to extend the vocabulary and to open the mind.
The debate on CLIL throughout the European Union is still very much alive. Fresh initiatives to promote this methodological approach are being undertaken, as well as information on good practice in the field of CLIL that is
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The eight key competences are: communication in the mother tongue; communication in foreign languages; mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology; digital competence; learning to learn; social and civic competences; sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; cultural awareness and expression. The first of the identified key competences is communication in the mother tongue, the command of which still remains the most important competence to have (European Parliament and the Council, 2006).
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circulating among the Member States. In particular, as technological innovation is increasingly permeating our lives and ways of learning, the European Commission analyzed in 2014 the influence of technology to improve the effectiveness and quality of language teaching and learning. The CLIL provision is likely to be used more and more with information and communication technologies (ICT), described as CALL, Computer Assisted Language Learning (see Section 1.3.2).
1.2 CLIL: what?
CLIL represents a high quality pedagogical approach fit for twenty-first century classrooms, in which the language is considered the greatest learning tool. Nowadays, CLIL teaching is part of primary and secondary school education in the majority of European countries (Eurydice, 2017).4 This method has been introduced in the educational system with its perspective being placed on content, language, integration, and learning. What emerges through the analysis of this approach within Europe is that there is not a prototype that has been exported from one country to another, but rather a range of different models depending on the situation where the schools are. What these models share is the interweaving of content and language in a dual-focused way. To fulfill the aim of teaching and learning both the content and the foreign language with its specific lexicon, basic frameworks of CLIL help in defining what are the principles on which the CLIL approach is founded. Specifically, these principles are linked to three conceptual models that support CLIL teachers at the planning stage of CLIL lessons: the 4-Cs' model, Bloom's taxonomy and Cummins' iceberg theory.
1.2.1 The 4-Cs' model
The 4-Cs' model was developed by the English professor Coyle (2005) and provides a conceptual frame to organize CLIL lessons, in which all the key elements that have an impact on CLIL are integrated. According to Coyle,
4 There is no CLIL provision in Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey and Iceland
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there are four guiding principles upon which CLIL is built: Content, Communication, Cognition, and Culture. Integration is the key point of this model that aims at connecting the different elements of learning to allow individual conceptual development and linguistic progression.
Although these four specific dimensions are integrated, it is the content that must lead the way. This model, in fact, considers the first C, the content (i.e., the subject area taught through CLIL), as the starting point of the learning process that involves learners constructing their own knowledge and developing skills. The integration of the different components of CLIL is supported by communication (i.e., the second C) and therefore the language, which must be accessible for the students in order to enable them to understand the content and activating the learning process. Doreen Coyle distinguished between three types of language for a meaningful communication: language of learning, language for learning, and language through learning. Language of learning is considered as the one learners need to access basic concepts and skills related to the content; language for learning focuses instead on the language needed to enable individuals to learn in a foreign language environment (e.g., how to operate in a group discussion; how to summarize, hypothesize, and ask questions); and finally, language through learning that refers to learning as an active process involving language and thinking. From this perspective, the other two Cs co-occur to organize an effective CLIL practice. The third C stands for cognition, which refers to the learning and thinking process of learners who are engaged through and towards creativity, and the fourth and final C is culture, which has to do with intercultural awareness, citizenship, and global understanding.
The integration of the 4-Cs in Coyle's model fosters the education of youngsters for internationalism, the opportunity to study content through different perspectives, the development of intercultural understanding, the improvement of target language competences, while using the language to learn, and learning to use the language; these are all goals that are at the core of the CLIL approach.
23 1.2.2 Bloom's taxonomy
The principles that constitute the conceptual basis of CLIL are enriched by the so-called taxonomy of educational goals. Firstly proposed by the American professor Benjamin Samuel Bloom (1956), this framework helps to classify the goals of the educational system in relation to precise cognitive processes (e.g., remembering and recalling knowledge, thinking, problem solving, creating) that are expected to be stimulated during lessons. It is a model that, in the words of Bloom, is expected to be of general help to all teachers and research workers who deal with curricular and evaluation problems (Bloom, 1956: 1).
The original model of Bloom's taxonomy classified thinking according to six types of cognitive processes in a scale of growing complexity (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Original Bloom's Taxonomy
This taxonomy provides a measurement tool for thinking skills, which are divided into two main categories: Lower Order Thinking Skills (i.e., knowledge, comprehension, and application) and Higher Order Thinking Skills (i.e., analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). The taxonomy proposes a classification of student behaviors which represent the intended outcomes of the educational process. Knowledge is the first and simplest form of thinking skills that involves the psychological process of remembering, which in the other categories is only one part of a much more complex procedure of
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relating, judging, and reorganizing. The following categories are part of a large class of intellectual abilities and skills that serve learners in dealing with materials and problems. Comprehension is part of this class, which corresponds to the understanding of what is communicated and the ability to make use of the ideas communicated. Comprehension of theory is necessary to step forward into the category of application, which is the ability to solve problems on the basis of what has been learnt. In Bloom's taxonomy, the skills involved in these cognitive processes are considered a less advanced level than those involved in the processes of the High Order Thinking Skills. This is the case of the analysis level, in which the emphasis is on the ability to break down the components of a theoretical subject to understand its organization, as well as the synthesis level, which involves combining elements in a creative way to constitute a clear pattern. Finally, at the last stage of this taxonomy we find the process of evaluation, considered as a complex process requiring to some extent all the other categories of cognitive behavior to make judgments about the value of methods and materials.
The original model of the taxonomy was later revised by a former student of Bloom, Lorin Anderson. In the 1990s, Anderson together with other collaborators (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) developed a two-dimensional framework on the basis of the one proposed by Bloom, which focused on two domains: the knowledge dimension and the cognitive process dimension. The aim of this framework was to explore curriculums and provide a model for teachers to determine educational objectives. What differs from the original model is the terminology, as illustrated by Figure 2, and the focus on the knowledge dimension as a distinct domain. Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) have identified four typologies of knowledge: factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. Three of them were already integrated in the first category of Bloom's taxonomy (i.e., knowledge). The fourth instead represents an innovative aspect in this domain, which stresses the importance of making students aware of their metacognitive activity, thus enabling them to use this knowledge to adapt the ways in which
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they think and operate. The attention to the different categories of the knowledge dimension was then integrated with the revision of the sequences of levels in the cognitive process domain.
Figure 2. Revised Bloom's taxonomy
As Figure 2 shows, the number of categories within the cognitive domain was retained, but with some changes: all the noun forms of each level were translated into verb forms, as this reflects the common form used in objectives. The first level that in the original corresponds to knowledge was renamed remembering, meaning the retrieval of relevant knowledge from long-term memory. Moreover, the second of the original categories was renamed understanding, involving the process of determining meaning from instructional messages. Application, analysis, and evaluation were just transformed into their verb forms, while the synthesis category changed its original collocation with the evaluation level and was renamed creating, defining the process of combining elements to form original products. Like the original taxonomy, the revised version retained the hierarchical structure, which locates the six categories of the cognitive process dimension on a scale of increasing complexity, with objectives from understanding through creating being the most important outcomes of education.
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The original purpose that led Bloom and his collaborators to construct this taxonomy was to facilitate communication and to improve the exchange of ideas and materials between teachers and researchers. This aim remains central in the revised taxonomy and today as well, especially in the field of CLIL in which national and international communication and comparison of experiences make it possible to extend the boundaries of this educational approach and to allow an effective dialogue between a widening community, which actually represents one of the goals of CLIL for both students and teachers.
1.2.3 Cummins' iceberg theory
In the late 1970s, the Irish professor Jim Cummins conducted research in the field of language learning and identified two different types of language skills acquired in different time frames: the so-called BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). In particular, Cummins observed that, in second language acquisition contexts, students often acquire peer-appropriate conversational fluency in the foreign language within about two years, but that requires considerably longer (i.e., from five to seven years) to reach an academic level of language proficiency (Cummins, 1984).
Language competences belonging to BICS involve pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and the ability to communicate fluently with others in an informal conversation. Language proficiencies pertaining to CALP refer to the semantic meaning of language in its academic use. The distinction between BICS and CALP has been graphically represented through the iceberg model (Cummins, 1984: 84), as Figure 3 illustrates, in which the visible features of language are those acquired in minor time, whereas the less visible features of semantic and functional meaning of language are the more critical and demanding dimensions to acquire.
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Figure 3. Iceberg model
This model, as well as Bloom's taxonomy, focused attention on the importance of acquiring content and language knowledge, integrating it with the development of thinking skills that help in understanding the basis and the processes laying behind language learning. In this sense, CLIL proposes new methodologies to develop both types of language levels (BICS and CALP) by fostering cooperation and dialogues in the foreign language among students CLIL also offers learners a specific and literacy-related lexicon of the content subject, engaging them in the deep-level cognitive processes needed for transforming informal classroom discussions into formal academic reports. 1.3 CLIL: how?
CLIL theory is translated into classroom practice according to a series of approaches used to foster teachers' and students' interest for this educational method.
The first aspect to consider for its centrality in the school context and for the effective application of an educational model is motivation. To motivate teachers is the first objective to pursue, considering that motivated teachers educate motivated students. Motivation plays a key role in achieving language and content learning in CLIL. A general decline in positive attitudes towards
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school subjects has been verified in a survey involving elementary students (Davies & Brember, 2001), in which the authors found that both males and females develop significantly less positive attitudes as they reach higher grades of school. This led to the conclusion that the more years students spend studying a subject, the more disenchanted with it they become. In this sense, the CLIL approach helps to diminish the effect of these factors by providing new approaches to teach a subject through and in a foreign language. Motivation in CLIL classrooms aims at involving firstly teachers who have with this method the opportunities to collaborate with colleagues and reconceptualize traditional educational practices. Once teachers are motivated, they should attempt to motivate learners using cooperative learning approaches and increasing autonomy and self-esteem of students by giving them the opportunity to learn by doing, as well as to use new technical devices, which belong to their everyday lives.
1.3.1 Educational strategies
Cooperative learning is an educational method that is central in the practice of CLIL and that has proved to have positive effects on students' learning achievement. Considering Vygotskij's theory (1997) about the mental development and the learning process, it is through the participation in activities with others that we structure our mental functioning. To involve students in a cooperative learning environment means to enable them to acquire knowledge of the contents as well as skills of communication and social interaction. The main features that characterize this approach involve group goals, in which scholars work together to fulfill a learning objective, and individual accountability, according to which the group's success depends upon the individual learning of all group's members. This approach tends to develop another strategy within the classroom and among students, which is the peer tutoring. In fact, when working in groups, differences in the learning processes and understanding between learners emerge. This context allow more able students to help peers in solving problems or reaching a goal while they reinforce the knowledge acquired.
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The reason why cooperative learning is an effective method in CLIL is related to the intergroup relations that allow students to interact and communicate in the foreign language, as well as to gain in self-esteem and social acceptance. In general, cooperative learning develops high-order thinking skills as classified in Bloom's taxonomy, enhances motivation, and improves peer relations (Slavin, 1990), which are all goals pertaining to CLIL. However, in CLIL lessons, attention is paid also to involving students in the learning process by practicing what they learn while they are learning it. David Marsh (2000) stressed the importance of effective learning through practice by comparing the learning of a language to that of playing an instrument: we cannot learn how to play the piano without being able to touch the keyboard. In order to learn how to master a musical instrument as well as a foreign language, we have to gain both knowledge and skill simultaneously by putting into practice the theory that we learn. This strategy reflects what many studies have demonstrated about the learning process, in which students' active involvement enhances learning (Benware & Deci, 1984).
1.3.2 Latest trends
In today's technology-oriented societies, it has been considered a good practice to introduce the use of technological devices to actively involve students in the learning process. Using at school the same technological tools with which students grow up, allows them to be more engaged in the process of learning and to have a more positive attitude, perceiving the use of computers as an innovative and attractive learning method.
Digital competence is considered one of the European key competences for lifelong learning (European Parliament and the Council, 2006) and the European Commission (2014) stressed the importance of using digital and multimodal didactic tools (e.g., web platforms, online dictionaries, game-based-learning) to intensify learners' interest and motivation. Starting from the use of videos as one of the most traditional and easy-to-find forms of technological tools, up to more sophisticated strategies to virtually connect
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teachers (e.g., Techno-CLIL for EVO) and students (e.g., eTwinning), new technologies are being introduced in the educational system of European schools. The use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in connection with the learning of a language is known as Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), an educational process used to explore the value and possible benefits of technology for teaching and learning in which learners use a computer to improve foreign language competences. As pointed out by the European Commission (2014), CALL offers innovative ways of teaching and learning a foreign language that have proven to be useful in CLIL contexts, such as computer-assisted pronunciation training that promotes student-centered learning, or game-based learning that develops problem solving and critical thinking skills.
As previously pointed out, videos are the easiest-to-find and widespread technological tools that teachers can use in classroom and they play a crucial role in a CLIL lesson (this fact also emerged from the analysis of teachers' interviews and students' questionnaires on CLIL practices collected for this study, see section 4.1.1). Both humanistic and scientific subjects may acquire an added value from the use of videos, as there is a wide range of video-sharing websites on the Internet, including video lessons, documentaries, and educational materials. A particular and motivating aspect of using videos in a CLIL class is the chance they give to teachers to introduce a topic in a different and appealing way (e.g., through PowerPoint presentations, YouTube videos) and to students to produce their own videos, becoming real protagonists of their learning pathways. The twenty-first century is characterized by a video sharing culture, in which it is crucial for a CLIL teacher to understand and exploit the potential of a video creation and presentation in a CLIL lesson to effectively and actively involve students in their learning project (European Commission, 2014; Cinganotto & Cuccurullo, 2016). However, what has proven to be particularly useful in the development of CLIL is a space for communicating and sharing ideas and experiences: this is what has been proposed with the realization of the online platform eTwinning and the online
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international community of teachers, trainers and educators, known as Techno-CLIL for EVO. The eTwinning project5, which is part of the EU program Comenius, represents a safe platform for both teachers and students to collaborate and explore topics across different curriculum subjects. By working together on projects in this platform, students develop their digital citizenship as well as learn about contents and develop key competences in foreign languages and cultural awareness. To help teachers in this new challenge of introducing technological devices in their CLIL lessons, a recent online and free course called Techno-CLIL for EVO6 (Electronic Village Online) was planned in 2016 (with 5,000 participants), and continued in 2017, to offer materials and the opportunity to participate in webinars and international conferences with experts on different topics related to CLIL and ITC. At the end of the training sessions, which last one month (from January to February) with a different topic each week, participants receive a certificate recognized as part of the Italian National Plan for teachers training (Piano Nazionale per la Formazione Docenti). Together with this course, a blog was organized for connecting and interchanging data and experiences between teachers. This initiative aimed at supporting and guiding participants online to discover and experiment digital tools for CLIL lessons, offering the opportunity to share ideas, materials, and good practices in an international perspective.
CLIL practices are gaining momentum in the educational system of the twenty-first century, enabling both teachers and students to rethink the learning process and developing a ‟well-done head” (Morin, 1999: 16-22). The introduction of the CLIL methodology allows teachers to reflect on and renovate educational approaches and to teach students as well to reflect on the content of a subject, on a foreign language, on their learning processes. Reflecting on what has been done and on what has been acquired should be the last phase of each CLIL lesson, especially in the light of what Donald Schön (1983) suggested about the capacity to reflect on action: an ability that engages
5 https://www.etwinning.net/it/pub/index.htm 6 http://technoclil.org/
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us in a process of continuous learning and that defines the characteristics of professional practice.
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2. CLIL in practice
In Europe, a variety of languages coexist and form a linguistic diversity that represents a value and a challenge for the European Union. Twenty-four are the official and working languages of the EU and the acquisition of language skills has become a prerequisite to participate in the personal and professional opportunities that the world offers (Eurydice, 2001). The acquisition of foreign languages educates European citizens to engage in intercultural dialogue and to take advantage of the increasing mobility within Europe, actively contributing to mutual understanding.
European students are between six and nine years old when they start learning a foreign language at school and they are expected to reach an 'independent user' level in this language by the time they finish school7. However, instructional time dedicated to foreign languages is rather low compared to other subjects and traditionally focuses on grammar and vocabulary, lacking the naturalness of dialogue that enables learners to effectively acquire the foreign language by practicing the rules of grammar and vocabulary while speaking with peers and teachers. Under these premises, the CLIL methodology provides opportunities to use a language that is different from the traditional language of instruction for acquiring new knowledge. By integrating a foreign language and a non-linguistic subject in the educational process, CLIL provisions make good use of instructional time and ensure that students learn curricular subjects while exercising and improving their language skills.
In almost all European countries, English is a mandatory foreign language to study during primary and secondary school levels; French, German and Spanish are the most common options as second foreign languages. Therefore, it is not surprising to find the majority of CLIL type provisions in European
7 One of the internationally applied procedures for the evaluation of foreign language learning
is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), which provides a scale of six levels of language proficiency: A1 and A2 (basic users), B1 and B2 (independent users), C1 and C2 (proficient users) (Council of Europe, 2001).
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schools based on English as the foreign language to integrate with the content subject (Eurydice, 2017). However, there are different forms of CLIL in the different European countries, in particular in relation to the choice of subjects to teach through and in a foreign language, and the exposure time that schools decide to dedicate to this approach. The following paragraphs focus on CLIL diffusion in two European countries (i.e., Germany and Spain) that are geographically and culturally near Italy and that are of interest in this research as contextual examples for the provision of CLIL in Europe. The choice of analyzing Germany and Spain is also due to personal reasons, as these two countries and their languages are part of my university studies at the University of Pisa. Nevertheless, the main focus of this thesis remains CLIL provision in Italy, as the closing section of this chapter discusses (see Section 2.3).
2.1 CLIL in Germany
Germany is a Federal Republic that consists of sixteen states (Länder), each of which has developed specific instructional pathways concerning the teaching and learning of foreign languages in light of European attention to multilingualism and integration.
In the first half of the Twentieth century, some German private and elitist schools already made use of the main principle of CLIL, using a foreign language to teach content subjects. However, it was with the Franco-German Treaty of 1963 that the CLIL approach entered the German educational system. After the Second World War, in fact, the French and German governments sought to foster reconciliation between the two countries by educating youngsters towards international understanding. To fulfill this aim, CLIL programs were introduced initially in grammar state schools in Germany (Gymnasien), implementing the integration of a foreign language with up to three subjects. In these schools, French was the only CLIL language used for more than ten years, then followed by the use of English that gained importance in the 1990s as an international and working language. Nowadays, CLIL schools can be found in all the Länder of the Federal Republic: more
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than seven-hundred schools offer CLIL type provision, with the North Rhine-Westphalia being the most populous federal state with the longest tradition in this educational field (Werner, 2009).
2.1.1 Organization of CLIL in the German school system
Children in Germany start learning a first foreign language as a compulsory subject at the age of eight (Eurydice, 2017: 30), while attending primary school (i.e., Grundschule). When they begin secondary school at the age of ten, they have the chance to opt for CLIL education. At this stage, teachers of primary schools usually advise parents about the proper secondary school for the child to choose (i.e., Gesamtschule, Realschule, Gymnasium).8 Interesting to note is that there are only a few foreign children of migrant families attending CLIL classes, probably due to parents' fear of enrolling them in such classes considering that their children's competence in German may not yet be sufficient to allow them to even contemplate these programs. On the contrary, students who are enrolled in CLIL classes consider this type of educational approach as an advantage for their academic and future professional life (Wolff, 2007). At the end of their secondary school studies, they do not receive special certification for having attended CLIL lessons, but those who have taken part in a CLIL project over the years obtain the normal diploma (Abitur), in which participation in a CLIL program is mentioned. However, when French is the foreign language used for CLIL, students obtain a double qualification that comprehends the German Abitur and the French baccalauréat, on the basis of an agreement that has been stipulated between the French and the German authorities (Wolff, 2002).
In the German school system, two different types of CLIL provision can be distinguished: a general CLIL method and a modular CLIL approach. In the traditional CLIL, students who choose CLIL education take part in a two-year preparatory course that consists of two/three additional language lessons per
8 In Germany, there are three main types of secondary schools: grammar schools, i.e. Gymnasien, comprehensive schools, i.e. Gesamtschulen, and schools more oriented to
