This study explores how the concept of Cognitive Discourse Functions can be used to improve competency-based history education in the context of Austrian upper-secondary CLIL history programmes. Following design-based research methodology, CDF-based history materials were designed, continuously developed, and evaluated, thereby addressing the lack of research-based implementation of content-and-language-integrative approaches.
Research on CLIL and other forms of additive bilingual education has typically focused on linguistic aspects although classroom pedagogy is often strongly determined by content teaching goals and materials. Recently, the research community has stressed the importance of transdisciplinary conceptualization of content and language integration. However, little attention has been paid to the operationalization of content-and-language-integrative approaches (Meyer et al. 2015). This study operationalizes a transdisciplinary approach by combining the perspectives of educational linguistics and history education. Conceptually, the study draws on Dalton-Puffer’s (2013) construct of Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs), which are assumed to be the generic linguistic expression of cognitive processes fundamental to teaching and learning and have been shown to be closely linked to historical competencies (colleague & author). To achieve the goal of operationalization, a design-based research framework has been adopted. In this study, the researcher and collaborating upper secondary teachers systematically developed CDF-based history materials and pedagogical tools over several cycles. These designs were repeatedly applied in the upper secondary CLIL classroom and continuously evaluated and refined, using interviews with teachers and students, classroom observations, and written learner tasks for data collection. First results suggest that working with CDFs in competency-based history education seems to be an approach accepted by teachers and students to focus on language in content subjects provided that the relation between content and language is made explicit. Furthermore, findings indicate that the learners’ performance of subject-specific competences as well as academic language skills benefit from this approach. Dalton-Puffer, C. (2013). A construct of cognitive discourse functions for conceptualising content-language integration in CLIL and multilingual education. EuJAL, 1(2), 216–253. https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2013-0011 Meyer, O., Coyle, D., Halbach, A., Schuck, K., & Ting, T. (2015). A pluriliteracies approach to content and language integrated learning. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 28(1), 41–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2014.1000924
