Pedagogy for culture in content and language integrated learning

Coyle’s (2006) now well-recognised 4 C’s model of CLIL depicts ‘culture’ at the centre of a pyramid, upon which content, communication, and cognition rest. Yet culture itself has remained largely under-theorised within much of the CLIL literature, relative to these other three dimensions. This theme considers what might be particular about culture as it applies to CLIL settings, together with related implications for pedagogy and practice.

This theme also brings into conversation implications for social equity, following Bourdieu’s (1984) claim that although certain cultural practices—when understood as ways of being, knowing, and doing—are not often (explicitly) taught, they are (implicitly) expected, valued, and rewarded. With culture at its centre as Coyle asserts, CLIL therefore has the potentially to offer a powerful disruption to otherwise normative practices of schooling that are driven by cultural assumptions about teaching and learning which are often not made visible, let alone scaffolded in terms of the language needed to mobilise them.

This project is seeking proposals from potential doctoral candidates related to this focus.

Key projects and publications

• MEd Project (Celine Fompudie): Developing Cosmopolitan Speakers: The Potential of CLIL.
• Integrating Indigenous Australian Knowledge and Japanese Language Learning (DFAT Australia-Japan Foundation Grant 2022-23)
• Cross, R. (2022). Addressing social equity by making explicit the implicit value systems within content and language learning: A pedagogical framework for culture within CLIL. AILA Review, 35(2), 180–202. doi:10.1075/aila.22025.cro

People

• Russell Cross
• Yvette Slaughter
• Celine Fompudie
• Shu Ohki
• Kylie Farmer