After lunch we continued with our discussions on CLIL, this time with far more debate than before as people saw the problems and big questions that affected their own national situations:
"Funding & Resources
Qualified teachers, materials, local development of materials, money.
1200 teachers have been supported in Germany through Comenius 2, 2c, where teachers are invited to apply for grants towards inservice training: 500 from Primary schools, 200 of whom had presented a desire to learn about CLIL. Priorities are set nationally and funding is provided internationally through groups like the EU, but funding still needs to be sought by individuals a great Austrian CLIL project was spearheaded by one individual teacher. There appears to be a lack of national coordination in recognising potential projects and in following the progress of existing ones.
One representative from Spain put perfectly the argument (in French) that meetings and conferences like the one we are at today are made up with participants who are already the converted: linguists. There are none of the other partners required to make CLIL work, the subject teachers. This is like the SETT Learning festival a few weeks ago: an ICT conference pushing the boundaries to a bunch of practitioners who are already pushing the boundaries.
In Andalucia there is the option of tuition of the foreign language in official language schools which accept young adults to teach them the linguistic skills necessary. The same exists for teachers, both in terms of language skills but also in terms of the pedagogy required to teach language skills. Foreign trips are encouraged, too, but few of these trips are geared up to the goals of CLIL and few of the participants appear to be of a non-linguist background.
The Netherlands are further ahead of the game, with a CLIL network already in existence. They had a conference last week for teachers to hone down their skills, and are setting up a course with a local university to help subject teachers gain better language skills. All subject teachers there have to gain a Cambridge certificate with a two-week trip to England before they can even apply for the CLIL programme.
Lithuania has the support of its Education Minister to gain financing for the training of its subject teachers in foreign language, too.
But there are three issues that stick:
Finance
EU grants remain underused at best, unused at worst. Any growth in the use of these resources generally comes from those who are already connected to the funding networks on offer – the rich getting richer in knowledge terms as well as financial terms?
Time
Who knows a subject teacher who has the time to learn a foreign language to teach their subject? Who knows one who’ll do all that with no recognition given for their efforts (yet)?
Motivation to learn: the language skills gap
Whereas most CLIL projects on the continent appear to use English as the medium, with a large majority of teachers possessing a minimum standard of language ability, potential CLIL projects in English-speaking countries are struck with a knowledge gap. Teachers in Scotland fall into one of three categories: a) they have no knowledge of another language; b) they have limited knowledge of several languages, but no one school has teachers all trained to a reasonable standard in one language; c) they are proficient in language but have not got the requisite expertise in a subject (i.e. they’re language teachers!)
Resources
The answer, I am glad to report, does not rely on paper resources (nor paper resources being “electronified”) being created a great expense and distributed across Europe. The answer is perhaps not in resources but in techniques. Already moves have been made in Germany to provide a toolbox of techniques and strategies for subject teachers. Examples of good practice, though, need to be found, filmed and made available, in much the same way as we are beginning to do on the MFLE. This way we can begin to create a common methodological framework to share across Europe.
The French promote the practice of shadowing – great for the Merry Few who make it onto one of those schemes. What about an internet-based library of videos from classrooms across the continent?
This is where the time ran out, and hopefully more discussion will take place in the coming weeks about developing this with the wide expertise already on show in the Netherlands and in Denmark.
Needless to say, business cards have been exchanged and emails will follow...
Comments