Abstract
The present PhD thesis represents the research project I have conducted in two high schools in the Province of Trento, Italy, during the school year, 2018-2019. The current empirical PhD project aims to closely observe the implementation of an innovative teaching philosophy called “Content and Language Integrated Learning” (referred to as CLIL hereafter) and gain a better understanding of how the CLIL method works. This teaching philosophy was analysed using qualitative research methods such as ethnography and multiple case studies. CLIL “is one of the most dynamic pedagogic [and didactic] trends in language teaching in Europe” and a very popular, mainstream approach to bilingual education in Italy (Hüttner & al. 2013, p. 267). The actors of this research are seven classes of high school students, who have been studying using this teaching method in two upper secondary education institutions in the Province of Trento, Italy, during the academic year 2018-2019 and their teachers. CLIL-based teaching projects have been successfully proceeding there for over five years; therefore, I believe that it is worth knowing what teaching using CLIL in Italian high school means in those cases, how they are achieving the required level of content and language and, what improvements can be made to better those results. The perspective is going to be a cutting-edge one, given that to focus is mainly on the perception of the students and teachers regarding the CLIL modules they have been participating in for the duration of the current school year and my participant observations. I am going to tell their stories and the story of CLIL based on what they think their accomplishments and competencies are in the English language and in the other subjects taught through it, their teachers’ evaluations, and my participant observations. To gather reliable qualitative data, several ethnographic research methods were employed including classroom observations, audio recordings of the CLIL lessons paired with interviews of the students, their teachers, and one of the principals. Moreover, I have analysed the documents gathered during this school year and afterwards, as I have kept in touch with many of my participants. The perspectives of all these actors are crucial for establishing an ethnographic understanding of the context in which these CLIL modules are being put into practice. 5 This doctoral research project seeks to add to the body knowledge in the field of didactics by analysing a teaching method, which is the main object of the discipline of didactics. Besides didactics, other disciplines in the field of sciences of education were employed as well to analyse this teaching methodology. Therefore, it benefits from the area of social science, by focusing on how the students and the teachers participating in the project feel about this CLIL teaching philosophy; to the field of ethnography, since the theoretical methodology and framework is ethnography; to the field of pedagogy, as we will be looking at the materials and the tools teachers used to put CLIL into practice; and to that of psychology, because this is more than a teaching technique, is a teaching philosophy. Consequently, I will determine how the teaching process takes place and what the most successful strategies are.