Strategic and organisational considerations in planning content and language integrated learning: a study on the coordination between content and language teachers

摘要

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is generally recognised as a fruitful example of bilingual education. However, success in CLIL may not be straightforward and may require the establishment of coordination between content and language teachers. The aim of this study is to investigate if content and language teachers are able to plan a number of different types of coordination at the curricular level: between the foreign language (FL) subject and the content subjects, between the language subjects (L1 and FL) and between the content subjects. Lesson plans from 27 primary schools have been analysed paying attention to this three-level coordination to determine to what extent the objectives, contents and activities of the language and content subjects are common and, consequently, reflect these three types of coordination. Results show that teachers are aware of the potentiality of this three-level coordination, and that they easily coordinate objectives and contents but they find more difficulties in designing activities in a coordinated way. Results in this study thus suggest that teachers can plan effectively curricular organisation and provides useful recommendation on how this coordination should be made.