As the Austrian subgroup of the Erasmus+ project ADiBE, we will focus on CLIL realities in secondary schools and how they are experienced by students and teachers. Based on various data-sets, we will report on the challenges and opportunities that CLIL offers for learners of all levels of attainment.
CLIL has been a grassroots undertaking in Austria since the early 1990s and has relied on bottom-up initiatives since then. The one exception to the generally flexible and uncoordinated policies that have largely resulted in ad-hoc implementations of limited sustainability is the top-down CLIL requirement that was introduced in all upper secondary vocationally-oriented colleges in 2013. While this mandatory CLIL policy requires all students in such schools to experience CLIL in a set number of lessons, the actual selection of subjects and timing remains to be decided by the school concerned. Although diametrically opposed in terms of policy type, both grassroots and top-down versions of CLIL imply that all learners in a particular setting are exposed to learning the contents of certain subjects in the target language, which almost exclusively is English. In other words, instead of preselecting students for CLIL strands, most Austrian schools engage all learners in a particular class or year group in their CLIL activities. In view of the aim of this symposium "to shed light on the issue of how (and if) CLIL works across different levels of attainment", the lack of streaming for CLIL is thus particularly valuable as it means that CLIL in Austria includes learners of all levels of attainment. As part of the Erasmus+ project ADiBE, this contribution will report on how students and teachers experience CLIL in different school contexts. Based on multi-layered data sets collected at schools at lower and upper secondary level, we will shed light on how CLIL practices are perceived and evaluated, especially pertaining to the needs of learners with different abilities.
