Conceptualising Integration in CLIL and Multilingual Education

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a form of education that combines language and content learning objectives, a shared concern with other models of bilingual education. While CLIL research has often addressed learning outcomes, this volume focuses on how integration can be conceptualised and investigated. Using different theoretical and methodological approaches, ranging from socioconstructivist learning theories to systemic functional linguistics, the book explores three intersecting perspectives on integration concerning curriculum and pedagogic planning, participant perceptions and classroom practices. The ensuing multidimensionality highlights that in the inherent connectedness of content and language, various institutional, pedagogical and personal aspects of integration also need to be considered.

Tarja Nikula is Professor in the Centre for Applied Language Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has extensive experience in CLIL research and has published widely on her areas of interest. In particular, she has been involved in conceptualising integration and the challenges it poses for the taken-for-granted notions of language, content and their learning, as well as in exploring CLIL from classroom interaction perspectives. Her current interests include exploring knowledge-building practices from a disciplinary literacy perspective and as a multisemiotic endeavour. She is well networked internationally and is leading a WG on conceptualising disciplinary literacies as part of COST Action CLIL Network for Languages in Education: Towards bi- and multilingual disciplinary literacies, chaired by professor Julia Hüttner.

Emma Dafouz is Professor of English Linguistics at Complutense University of Madrid. Her research deals with the roles and uses of English in educational settings, both in CLIL programs and in multilingual higher education. Her research has been published in international journals such as Applied Linguistics, Modern Language Journal or Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Recent publications include ROAD-MAPPING English-medium education in the Internationalised University (2020, Palgrave MacMillan co-authored with Ute Smit) and Researching English-medium higher education: Diverse applications and critical evaluations of the ROAD-MAPPING framework (2023, Routledge co-edited with Smit). She is Principal Investigator of the international project SHIFT, funded by the Spanish Government.

Pat Moore is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Languages and Translation at the University Pablo de Olavide, where both her teaching and research revolve around questions of language education. Nowadays most of her teaching is at post-graduate level, with pre-service and in-service teacher development, and her research is centred on various facets of bilingualism – both from the perspective of bilingual education (teachers) and emerging bilinguality (students). She recently co-edited a monograph devoted to tertiary bilingual education for the Spanish journal Porta Linguarum and published an article in the ELT Journal discussing the idea of bilinguality as the goal of EFL. She is also one of the editors of Conceptualising Integration in CLIL and Multilingual Education, published by Multilingual Matters in 2016. Prior to Sevilla she worked at universities in the UK, China and Brazil – where she spent some time at UFES; thereby laying the seeds for the international collaboration behind this chapter.

Ute Smit’s main research focus is on English used as a classroom language in various educational settings, by combining micro, meso and macro perspectives. Her publications deal with ELF (English as a lingua franca), CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), EMEMUS (English Medium Education in Multilingual University Settings), teacher beliefs and language policy. Recent projects include ‘ADiBE’, ‘CLIL@HTL’ and ‘INTE-R.LICA.’ She was a co-founding member of the AILA Research Network on CLIL and Immersion Education, and is presently a board member of the ICLHE (Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education) Association.