Confirmation Congratulations: Xiaoqing Chen

Congratulations to Xiaoqing Chen, whose candidature was recently confirmed for her following PhD project:

CLIL teachers’ practice of the “third C” and its relationship with their language-/content-dispositions

“Cognition” is one of the four key dimensions that comprise of understanding of CLIL (alongside Communication, Content, and Culture), and existing research has extended our knowledge of cognition and CLIL with respect to instructional materials (Banegas & Tavella, 2021), linguistic discourse (Evnitskaya & Dalton-Puffer, 2020), and teachers’ beliefs (Campillo-Ferrer et al., 2020). Yet there has been little systematic investigation into teachers’ practice and the strategies actually used to foster this skill when both the language and content being learned are new. This study brings theories of practice informed by Bourdieu and Vygotsky to analyse how cognition is practised in CLIL classes. Of particular significance, it recognises the role of teachers’ un- or pre-thought inclinations that guide actions, also known as “dispositions” (Bourdieu, 1980/1990), and investigates whether a disposition that leads practitioners to orientate more heavily towards either content or language shapes differences in how they develop cognitive skills in a context of CLIL classrooms. 

We look forward to your future research outcomes, Xiaoqing!