Abstract Summary
This paper presents the qualitative analysis of the work carried out by pre-service English teachers when planning CLIL projects for teaching practice in schools. It involved 40 students from the Faculty of Education, at the University of Barcelona. The findings offered some valuable insights into trainee's conceptions about scaffolding language and content, and about learning skills development.
Abstract :
Over the past years, many schools in Catalonia have developed and implemented Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes and initiatives of very different types with varying degrees of success. Integrating content and a foreign language presents a great challenge to teachers who need to plan, implement and evaluate units of study coherent with 21st century teaching and learning objectives. Language teacher educators need to address these challenges and develop responsive programmes for initial teacher education and further professional development.
This paper presents the qualitative analysis of the work carried out by pre-service English teachers when planning CLIL projects in two different periods of their preparation for teaching practice in schools. CLIL students need language support, and their learning has to be scaffolded. The trainees were asked to take into account and reflect upon the challenges that language presents to the learning of content from different areas of the curriculum. They needed to analyse the language systematically, in order to identify specialised vocabulary, phrases and structures for communication, and they also had to consider careful material selection and instructional planning.
The work was conducted in the English Language Teaching Module taught in the last year of a four-year teacher education degree for students intending to teach English in primary schools. It involved over 40 students from the Teacher Education Faculty at the University of Barcelona. The main aim of the module was to plan projects in which meaningful classroom activities can support children’s discourse skills development in the foreign language. The findings supported the relevance of language awareness in the process of learning, and offered some valuable insights into pre-service teachers' conceptions about scaffolding language, as well as content and learning skills development.
