This paper uses the metaphor of “dance” to conceptualize interdisciplinary collaborations between applied linguists and content faculty at a Canadian university for the purpose of developing strategies and approaches to support linguistically diverse students in content classrooms. The findings suggest such collaborations are sites of complex negotiations and creative improvisation.
Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is an approach to language education that has enjoyed growing interest among researchers and practitioners in many parts of the world (Cenoz, Genesee, & Gorter, 2016; Morton, 2016; Lin, 2016). Although this approach to language education has been well researched in K-12 settings and European post-secondary English as a medium of instruction contexts (e.g., Creese 2010; Early, 2001; Pawan & Ortloff, 2011; Slater & Mohan, 2010), research on interdisciplinary collaborations for the purpose of CLIL in Anglo-dominant higher education contexts is limited (Jacobs, 2007; Smit & Dafouz, 2012, Zappa-Hollman, 2018). This paper argues, in part, that in an Anglo-dominant internationalized university where the role of English is often “overlooked, assumed, or not considered at all” (Byrd Clark, Haque & Lamoureux, 2012, p. 2), efforts to integrate language and content in the context of disciplinary courses could be viewed as representing an innovative pedagogical approach in bringing together content faculty (i.e., disciplinary experts) and applied linguists to collaborate for the purpose of developing strategies and linguistically responsive instruction (Gallagher & Haan, 2018) to engage and support students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The metaphor of “dance” is used to conceptualize interdisciplinary collaborations for the purpose of CLIL at a multilingual Canadian university. Data is drawn from 19 audio recorded professional development meetings involving applied linguists as well as semi-structured individual interviews of applied linguists and content faculty. To analyze the complex entanglements of this dance, we use four factors identified by Jacobs (2007) as influencing collaborative partnerships – roles and responsibilities, nature of the relationships, collaborative interactions, and power dynamics. The findings suggest that these collaborations are sites of complex negotiations and creative improvisation that afford linguistically responsive pedagogy with the ultimate goal to support the academic success of all students in Anglo-dominant universities.
