Language and Teaching Methodology Features of CLIL in University Classrooms: A Research Synthesis

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a dual focus educational approach widely used in European primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions in which content subjects included in the mainstream curriculum are taught through a foreign language, usually English. This paper presents a systematic review on relevant existing literature on the application of the CLIL approach in university classrooms. A total of 22 studies were identified and chosen for further analysis; the categories emerged from the analysis itself. These studies, which focused on language and methodological features, were explored to determine the research trends in terms of location, methodology, participants, data collection instruments, focus, teaching methodology and language focus. The results of the review show a trend to examine classroom discourses and the development of pragmatic competence in CLIL classrooms. As a result of the review, the paper offers suggestions for future research on the CLIL approach in university classrooms as more tertiary education institutions around the globe are adopting English as the language of instruction.

THE FEATURES OF MEDIATION IN EFL CLASSROOM INTERACTION: TEACHER PERSPECTIVES

The classroom is a place where the teacher, as an expert and the knower, teaches students through interactions influenced by several sociocultural backgrounds. Moreover, the teacher plays a role in mediating language learning processes by providing effective mediation. In brief, mediation can be defined as all objects delivered by the teacher to mediate the students to bring their current ability to the targeted performance. This current research serves to describe the features of mediation applied by English teacher in one lower secondary school in the EFL classroom context. This qualitative-based inquiry applied classroom observation and interviews as instruments to explore how the teacher mediated language learning in the classroom particularly for beginner-level students in one private school in Jakarta. The findings showed that the features of shared intention are the most salient to be mediated. This indicates that the teacher is very concerned with helping and facilitating the students to perform tasks. In addition, in mediating values, challenges, change and competence, the teacher creates engaging classroom discourses, selects particular tasks, and nurtures a positive classroom climate. Moreover, the teacher sets herself as a mediator as well as mediation as an ideal form of behavior and language model in the class.Keywords: English; foreign language; mediation; sociocultural view.

Room for monsters and writers: Performativity in children’s classroom drawing

Much research on children’s classroom drawing emerged from an interest in the relationships between drawing and early writing and focused on drawing as a pedagogical tool to engage young children in planning, generating, and illustrating story ideas. In an eight-month case study of children’s drawing in a kindergarten language arts curriculum, the author focused on children’s classroom drawing not as a pedagogical intervention, but as an emergent event in which the intra-actions of children, drawing, and discourses coalesce. Of the many findings from this project, prevalent is the notion that children’s drawing and drawings function as vehicles for more than just pre-literacy—that drawing and drawings produce critical, creative, and constructive thinking and learning. In this article, the author discusses children’s drawing and drawings as events in which the often divergent interests of children, teachers, and curriculum materialize. Butler’s and Barad’s notions of performativity—the ways in which bodies materialize larger social discourses, such as gender—help the author to make sense of the ways children perform popular culture discourses, such as “monster,” or local classroom discourses, such as “writer,” in the kindergarten classroom. In looking at children’s drawing and drawings as material, discursive, and productive events, the author hopes to expand perceptions of children’s drawing beyond indicators of development, aesthetics, or literacy acquisition into critical, creative, and constructive learning experiences with significant cultural implications.

Student impulses and teacher feedback The relevance of teacher feedback for the classroom discourse and students’ meaning making in teaching on socio-scientific issues

Today teachers face an increased challenge in listening to classroom discourses and students' areas of interest to let these coincides with the overall teaching purpose by feedback. Present study explore how classroom communication can be modeled to allow this. The socio-scientific-issues raised were at the same time aimed at creating relevance in the students’ social life as giving a respond to the curriculum. The data consisted of recordings from science lessons in grade 7 and 8 in Sweden. To make visible the tension that occurred between different discourses and displacement of power in the conversations, practical epistemological analysis has been made. This resulted in a categorization of five different ways the teacher is taking care of and reconnects the students’ impulses in relation to the overall purpose. Consequently, this study is offering opportunities for teachers to, in a consciously manner, reflect on different strategies for discourse feedback in teaching.

Conceptual frameworks in didactics – learning and teaching: Trends, evolutions and comparative challenges

This special issue of the European Educational Research Journal presents a series of research papers reflecting the trends and evolutions in conceptual frameworks that took place within the EERA 27 ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’ network during its first ten years of existence. Most conceptual tools used in this field were elaborated in different socio-historical contexts for education and schooling delineated by nations and/or linguistic regions in Europe. This issue suggests possible integrative paths between certain frameworks debated in the Network 27 through co-authored papers. Crossed perspectives on the papers highlight certain important foci in the study of learning and teaching processes: (i) ‘Bildung’ discussed within didactics as a European research field; (ii) Educational goals, content and teaching methods expressed in curricula; (iii) Curriculum making processes; (iv) Teaching qualities, teaching (joint) actions and classroom discourses; and (v) Collaborative practices in teacher professional development. Finally, two strands of comparative research in didactics are sketched for increasing synergies in the field.

Analysing the continuity of teaching and learning in classroom actions: When the joint action framework in didactics meets the pragmatist approach to classroom discourses

One strand of comparative didactics aims at discussing the relationships between the theoretical constructions developed within subject didactics and how these can contribute to research about teaching and learning. This article explores the relationships between categories for analysing joint actions of teacher and students (didactic contract, milieu, mesogenesis, topogenesis, chronogenesis) and categories used in the pragmatist approach of classroom discourse analysis (practical epistemology and epistemological moves). We combine both frameworks to feature different types of breaches in the didactic contract and the building of continuity in teaching and learning actions for dealing with these breaches. Analyses are carried out through examples of classroom events in science education and physical education. We argue that these frameworks, when elaborated on and compared, enable us to characterise both generic and specific dimensions of teaching and learning in different subjects.