The knowledge base of CLIL teaching in multilingual primary education settings

In the context of high levels of internationalisation and mobility, the number of primary schools offering early foreign language programmes, particularly in English, has risen sharply in recent years. Increasingly, schools are adopting a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach, whereby the teaching and learning of subject content (e.g. science) and language occur in an integrated manner. At the same time, the cultural and linguistic diversity of pupils in primary education has increased significantly, calling for more multilingual approaches to both content and language education, and thus to CLIL. While CLIL offers many opportunities for high-quality, inclusive education in multilingual primary settings, questions remain as to how the integration of content and language teaching in these settings can be realised, and what teacher knowledge and competencies are required for that. We report on a collaborative research project involving UK and Dutch primary school teachers, teacher trainers and educational researchers, who are working to support English as an additional language (EAL) learners and English as a foreign language (EFL) learners respectively, and who are eager to collectively find answers to these questions. Combining practical examples and teachers’ insights from the classroom with theoretical insights, we will present a framework of teacher knowledge for effective CLIL teaching in multilingual classrooms that emerged from this work. The framework explores the what, who, when and how of successful language teaching in the content area, and offering concrete recommendations for CLIL teacher professional development and research.