CLIL across Educational LevelsEmma Dafouz & Michele C. Guerrini (eds). Madrid: Santillana Educación / Richmond Publishing, 2009. 148 pages. ISBN: 978-84-668-0259-8.

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CLIL across Educational Levels
Emma Dafouz & Michele C. Guerrini (eds).
Madrid: Santillana Educación / Richmond Publishing, 2009. 148 pages.
ISBN: 978-84-668-0259-8.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), or the use of a foreign
language for the instruction of content based disciplines, has existed in
different forms for many years, mostly in countries with a bilingual or
multilingual population. In the case of Europe, the need of a single market
and the common policy of promoting multilingualism have led to the more
and more widely spread adoption of CLIL in all levels of education. The
Commission of the European Communities’ (1995) White Paper entitled
Teaching and Learning: Towards the Learning Society marked the beginning of a
series of educational experiences in different European countries, which
helped the CLIL concept take shape. Since then, the increasing number of
projects, thematic networks, stay-abroad programmes, publications and
international conferences demonstrate its expansion and importance for all
those involved in education, from parents and teachers to learners and policy
makers.
The book CLIL across Educational Levels offers a valuable addition to current
work, as it explores experiences carried out in Spain in a variety of courses,
using English as the medium of instruction, and ranging from the primary
to the tertiary level of education. The five parts into which it is divided are
preceded by a Preface by MERCEDES CABRERA, the former Spanish Minister
of Education, Social Policy and Sport, where she briefly sketches the main
achievements of the on-going bilingual project started by the Spanish
government in 1996 in collaboration with the British Council, and which
constitutes the basis of all the experiences described in the book. The
Preface is followed by a Foreword by Professor DO COYLE, one of the
leading voices in CLIL pedagogy. Next, in the Introduction, the editors,
EMMA DAFOUZ and MICHELE C. GUERRINI, offer their assessments of what
the different chapters might offer to the reader, and invite CLIL practitioners
to share and discuss new experiences. The first part of the book serves to
set the scene by presenting an overview of CLIL as the basic feature of a
new European approach to education. Parts two, three and four focus on
hands-on practice, and describe experiences carried out in different
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institutions, most of them located in the Madrid area, and as the title of the
book indicates, across diverse educational levels. The fifth and last part
(Chapter 10) presents reflections on assessing and benchmarking in order to
differentiate good and bad practices. The volume closes with the biodata of
the contributors, and includes a CLIL glossary (which should certainly be
improved, as the criteria for the selection of the terms included are utterly
confusing) as well as an index of key words.
The first section starts with CARMEN PÉREZ-VIDAL’s chapter, a clear outline,
solidly grounded in research, of what she calls “the CLIL European
construct”, a new multifaceted educational paradigm. She begins by
presenting a diachronic perspective of measures taken by European
institutions since the 90s and then moves on to describe the three factors
which are at the core of CLIL pedagogy, and the socio-cultural, curricular
and psycholinguistic dimensions on which CLIL rests. Although well aware
of the challenges it poses, Pérez-Vidal ends the chapter with an emphasis on
the many benefits of this new approach.
In the second section, four experiences from primary education in Spain
(which covers children in the age range of six to eleven) are described. In
Chapter 2 ANA HALBACH, basing her reflections on relevant literature and on
the actions taken and the results obtained from a research project she
coordinated, highlights adequate teacher-training and teacher support as the
most important challenge if bilingual experiences are to be successful.
Another project developed under the overarching notion of bilingualism, in
this case in a rural area near Madrid, is the concern of Chapter 3. CARLOS
MIRANDA and RUBÉN GARCÍA sketch the steps taken to implement it, and
describe how a small rural school was transformed into a successful bilingual
centre. They summarize the methods adopted, the teaching timetables and
the subjects taught in English, with particular emphasis on physical education.
In Chapter 4, Mª ANTONIA FERNÁNDEZ YUBERO and Mª ISABEL PAREJA
MORENO describe how technology was applied as part of the implementation
of another bilingual project. They give several examples of the activities
which were carried out, mostly topic-focussed presentations and encounters
between British and Spanish schools. The tables and figures included clearly
show how science, history, literacy and arts and crafts were interrelated with
ICT. Chapter 5, by TERESA REILLY and PILAR MEDRANO, gives an account of
the Ministry of Education/British Council bilingual project, started in 1996.
The authors review the history of bilingual schooling, first in Canada and
then in Spain, and list the key conditions for successful outcomes. Next, they
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present the bilingual project’s general achievements. The fact that this chapter
describes the project under whose umbrella all the rest have been carried out,
and that it analyses the factors that guarantee an easy transition from primary
to secondary bilingual education, gives it a hinge character, connecting the
second and third parts of the book.
Section three focuses on secondary education. In the very well-referenced
Chapter 6, ANA LLINARES and RACHEL WHITTAKER report the compilation
and analysis of a learners’ corpus of spoken and written English as was
produced in secondary school geography and history classes. Conclusions
point out the importance of class discussions as a scaffolding activity. The
authors end with a plea for a functional approach to the language of the
disciplines taught, so as to introduce language awareness activities in
response to the students’ communicative needs. One of the strongest
contributions of the next chapter by MARCELA FERNÁNDEZ RIVERO,
CARMEN GARCÍA DE LA MORENA and ELENA DEL POZO is the description of
a very well designed and visually attractive unit on the Norman conquest of
England. It provides the reader with suggestive ideas and several excellent
appendices which could be taken as point of reference for those teachers
interested in implementing a more student-centred methodology.
The fourth section of the book, which deals with tertiary education, begins
with EMMA DAFOUZ and BEGOÑA NUÑEZ’s excellent Chapter 8. After
reviewing the present state of CLIL in higher education across Europe, they
show the results of a pilot study carried out in two Spanish universities on
the different attitudes that teachers and students have towards the potential
application of a CLIL methodology, and present their conclusions. They
express their certainty that things will improve in the future, as a new
generation of CLIL students and teachers reaches higher education; like
LLINARES and WHITTAKER in Chapter 6, they advocate a genre approach to
CLIL teacher-training, and its putting into practice through team teaching.
The last chapter in this section, Chapter 9, by DIANA FORAN and CARMEN
SANCHO, draws upon theoretical and practical perspectives to a top-down
implementation of CLIL in tertiary LSP education. They present two case
studies, the first one from the School of Aeronautical Engineering of the
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and the second one from the Faculty of
Pharmacy of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Both of them
suggest ways of incorporating CLIL and LSP in tertiary education by means
of a series of motivating activities based on the reformulation of the role of
the teacher as facilitator/provider.
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Section five concludes this collection of essays with a focus on assessment
and benchmarking. In Chapter 10, BELÉN ROZA describes the action-
research BeCLIL project, which was carried out jointly in Finland, the
Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain, co-financed by the participating
institutions and the EU within the framework of the Socrates Programme
2004-2007. ROZA presents a comprehensive checklist for benchmarking
good practice as well as the BeCLIL objectives, workplan and outcomes, and
finishes her outline highlighting a number of essential areas which would
require further development if policy makers want to obtain successful
results from the application of the CLIL approach.
As a whole, the book thus presents a multilayered view of CLIL recent
practices in Spain, and provides readers with useful material from which to
get inspiration for a change in methodology. The clear layout of each chapter
also adds to its di