Integrating Multilingual Practices in Content and Language(s) Integrated Learning: a Survey of Research on Teachers' Perspective

The role of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in bilingual education has been an object of debate in European countries. On the one hand, it is commonly agreed that CLIL lessons stimulate interest in language through content; on the other, several problems and insecurities about the concrete implementation of this methodology emerge through teachers' surveys and questionnaires. In particular, the most predominant issues revealed by previous and current research in the field concern the difficulties that subject teachers face due to their inadequate language competencies. This affects both teachers and learners, and becomes a substantial obstacle, especially when dealing with the specialised technical vocabulary of scientific subjects. First, the paper starts contextualising CLIL within the European and Italian framework, examining the most important policy recommendations to better understand the acknowledged importance of this methodology and the role it plays in implementing the principles of plurilingualism and multilingual education. Second, a survey of research, giving voice to primary and secondary school CLIL teachers, analyses the most significant perceived difficulties they face implementing a CLIL lesson. Specifically, the following aspects are examined: i.e. potential benefits of CLIL, teaching, assessing, and evaluating issues, adequacy of teaching resources and material, linguistic issues and support received. Third, shedding light on the linguistic challenges, the work propounds the integration of inclusive multilingual practices, specifically translanguaging, to overcome teachers perceived linguistic inadequacy. Indeed, by going beyond the existence of conventionally defined linguistic boundaries, translanguaging allows a higher degree of freedom of expression and self-confidence, for both students and teachers, as well the use of more diverse linguistic resources, others than English, as vehicular languages in CLIL.