Keywords

1 CLIL: Transgressing Borders

New knowledge spreads like sunlight, which travels from space, where it was generated, to the atmosphere and reaches the earth, where it is reflected on the surface. Reacting to the texture and material of the surface, the light then behaves in a distinctive manner by emitting different colours and tremors. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) crosses many borders: the pedagogical approach of CLIL first travelled within European countries and has now reached non-European countries, evolving in the education systems of each region as described in Part I of this volume. CLIL practices transgress the boundaries between subject content classrooms and language classrooms, integrating content and language learning, as shown in the chapters in Part II. CLIL studies encompass a range of fields, from the interaction in CLIL classrooms from perspectives of linguistics and applied linguistics, which includes systemic functional linguistics and discourse studies as addressed in Part III to sociolinguistic and pedagogical issues as focused on in Part IV (also see Llinares, 2015 and Llinares & Morton, 2017).

Lasagabaster (2015) proposed four levels of the internationalisation of language policies on the basis of Spolsky’s (2004) three components, language planning, language practicesandlanguageideology: (1) macro level, that is, EU policies; (2) meso level, that is, national guidelines for language education; (3) micro level, that is, internal guidelines in an individual institution; and (4) nano level, that is, language choices of stakeholders (ibid., p. 259). Utilising the framework, the features in CLIL in Spain and Japan explored in this book are compared and summarised as below.

 

Spain

Japan

The macro/meso levels:

the introduction of CLIL

Top-down, proactive

Bottom-up, reactive

The micro level:

The diffusion of CLIL

Primary

– Secondary

– Tertiary

– Pre-Primary

Tertiary

– Primary

– Secondary

CLIL teacher training

Interdisciplinary education degree courses in higher education

Workshops provided by teachers’ associations, local educational authorities and some ELT courses in higher education organised by individual teacher educators

The nano level:

CLIL and multilingualism

Societal and individual multilingualism

Individual multilingualism

In the macro/meso levels, as reported in Chap. 2, the concept of CLIL was developed to promote the European Union’s multilingual policy, and it has been implemented in several member states including Spain. As Sylvén (2013) states, “CLIL in Spain has virtually exploded during the last decade. Having a history of bilingualism in some of its autonomous regions, the teaching of content through another language than Spanish is fairly uncontroversial” (p. 303). However, as explained in Chap. 3, in Japan, there is no supra-national organisation equivalent to the EU to plan language policies across Asian countries. In Japan, CLIL is not implemented in subject lessons taught in an additional language but in English lessons as part of the official syllabus. However, the Japanese national curriculum, the Courseof Study, which was recently updated, encourages cross-curricular teaching and learning in foreign language classrooms in secondary schools. Also, CLIL in English has been adapted in tertiary education to meet the demands of the global economy. Thus, CLIL in Spain could be said to be “proactive (creating situations)”, while in Japan it can be seen as “reactive (responding to situations)” (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010, p. 6) (also see Tsuchiya & Pérez Murillo, 2015).

At the micro level in the context of Spain (see Chap. 2), the diffusion of CLIL in formal education started from some subject classes in primary and secondary bilingual schools but has now expanded to tertiary and pre-primary education.Footnote 1 The order is slightly different in Japan (see Chap. 3): some universities first adapted CLIL pedagogy in their foreign language courses (mainly English classes) first, and more recently a few local education authorities have introduced CLIL in primary and secondary schools in the self-governing regions. In Spain, university education departments offer well-developed interdisciplinary CLILteacher education programmes within degree courses. This is not the case in Japan where a teacher association, such as J-CLIL, or local education authorities provide workshops for teachers who are interested in the pedagogy, and some pre-service CLILteacher education programmes are implemented as part of English Language Teaching (ELT) courses by individual teacher educators at universities (see Chaps. 12, 13, 14 and 15).

To summarise the nano-level practices on both sides, the concepts of societal multilingualism and individual multilingualism could be employed. In reference to Beardsmore’s (1986) theory, Fortanet-Gómez (2013) lists the elements of societal and individual multilingualism: the former features social status, geographic bilingualism and language practice and planning, while the latter relates to language acquisition and competence, cognitive organisation and social cultural identities (adapted from Fortanet-Gómez, 2013, pp. 7 and 13). As examined in Chap. 15, CLIL in the Spanish context affects and is affected by both societal and individual multilingualism, whereas CLIL in Japan seems to focus mainly on individual learners’ competence with little attention to societal aspects.

2 Transformation Through CLIL

As the notions of the multilingual turn (May, 2014) and alternative approaches to second language acquisition (Atkinson, 2011) indicate, language education in the globalised society is taking on an increasingly reflexive and performative perspective. CLIL aligns with this trend, and it can be seen as a transformer of the current educational system. In the theory of critical pedagogy, Pennycook (2001, p. 117) categories three perspectives on schools and classrooms as social phenomena: (1) a standard view regards classrooms as not social but purely “educational space”, (2) from a reproductive standpoint, classrooms reflect “dominant social interests”, which are reproduced through the social system, and (3) a resistance standpoint treats “all knowledge as political” and sees classrooms as “social cultural struggle”. To this he adds a more positive prospect for classrooms as a social practice:

What is needed […] is a way of understanding resistance and change. This is important not only because we need better understanding of what actually goes on in classrooms but also because as educators, we need a sense that we can actually do something. (Pennycook, 2001, p. 127, our emphasis)

This perspective can be termed as a transformative view, and this is where CLIL can fit in. In other words, CLIL can be recognised as a transformative pedagogy for better education as evidenced through this volume. It is hoped that this volume can be a useful resource for teachers and researchers to understand the different shapes CLIL takes on in distinct contexts and to actually do CLIL teaching and research in their own ways and according to their own needs.