Let's CLIL!: Pedagogical-Linguistic Reflections Between Teacher Education and Classroom Teaching – A Focus on the Italian Context

Introduction

In the age of complexity (Morin, 2008), the acquisition of one or more foreign languages turns out to be crucial: schools have a crucial role in promoting educational pathways that allow students to experience linguistic otherness and make a language other than their native tongue (L1) their own (Choi & Ollerhead, 2017; Piccardo et al., 2021). It is about moving beyond transmissive teaching in favor of an educational action in which the teacher brings skills, empathy, and passion into play (Biesta, 2017; Swann, 2011) so that each pupil is deeply involved in a series of mental and cognitive processes and social events that allow for accelerated stages of development of the L2, i.e., the non-native tongue (L2) (Durlak et al., 2015; Gueldner et al., 2020).

CLIL methodology, an acronym for Content and Language Integrated Learning coined in 1994 by David Marsh and Anne Maljers (Marsh, 1994), appears functional in pursuit of this goal. It is a approach aimed at integrated learning of language-communication and disciplinary skills in a foreign language (Marsh et al., 2001). This methodology is becoming increasingly popular both around the world (Hemmi & Banegas, 2021), where it is spreading with incredible rapidity, and in Europe (EC, 2012; EC et al., 2017), as L2 language competence for learning disciplinary content is considered a key dimension for the modernization of European school systems. CLIL, then, is considered an engine for the renewal and improvement of school curricula in an inclusive way, attentive to everyone’s needs and to making everyone achieve excellence (Bower et al., 2020; Codó, 2022), in the name of equity. In fact, CLIL was born precisely with the aim of promoting social justice (Fortanet-Gómez, 2013): everyone learns the same language, beyond the socioeconomic and sociocultural conditions of their families, and thanks to schooling they will have the same opportunities to exercise citizenship. Moreover, the 2030 Agenda (UN, 2015) also emphasized the importance of quality education for all: CLIL certainly represents a means to give everyone a concrete opportunity to open to an increasingly global reality.

This chapter adopts a pedagogical-linguistic perspective to analyse teacher training in CLIL methodology and argue for the need to design CLIL educational pathways that take into account both the linguistic and pedagogical dimensions. For this very reason, it is essential to emphasize the fundamental assumption of this methodology: the acquisition of an L2 is not a goal in itself but is integrated into the teaching and learning process of a discipline (Coyle et al., 2010; Marsh, 2002; Nieto Moreno de Diezmas & Espinar, 2022). In other words, educational and didactic pathways address both L2 and discipline-specific content, since to speak of CLIL means to refer to doubly focused educational contexts in which another language, different from the one habitually spoken by the learner, is used as a means to teach and learn a nonlinguistic content (Mehisto et al., 2008). After specifying the organization of the Italian school system with reference to primary schools and outlining lights and shadows with respect to the spread of CLIL methodology in Italy, we will move on to analyze some essential aspects of their training. In this regard, operational lines will be drawn to highlight the indispensable dimensions of teacher training in CLIL methodology. The design of an educational experience will then be analyzed, to highlight how pedagogical and linguistic aspects must be inseparable within CLIL courses.