Narrative Analysis as a Means of Investigating CLIL Teachers’ Meaningful Experiences

Abstract

An ever-increasing need for a bilingual education in globalized societies have set new challenges for all stakeholders from ideological (monoglossic vs heteroglossic) as well as methodological perspectives. Teachers’ persistent interest in different forms of bilingual education has attracted us to explore the potential of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) as a means of attaining a bilingual education in the second decade of the 21st century, especially the professional development of teachers who work in the given context. In this study, narrative analysis is employed to investigate how teachers’ explicit meaningful experiences lead a teacher to become a CLIL teacher in the Estonian educational settings, and disclose the factors shaping this process. The results reveal a variation in the teachers’ meaningful experiences driven mostly by their context – the type of bilingual program, the status of the foreign language, school support for collaborative practices - as well as a variation in the belief of what constitutes CLIL - views on languages and personal pedagogical beliefs.

Percepciones de los docentes de áreas no lingüísticas sobre las necesidades formativas en AICLE en educación primaria

“…Además, estudios como el desarrollado por Custodio y García (2020) han propuesto instrumentos para analizar la competencia de los docentes para programar siguiendo el enfoque AICLE, una perspectiva de gran importancia como punto de partida para el desarrollo de acciones formativas. Ljalikova et al (2021) afirman que "starting a CLIL teaching career is a completely new experience and comparable to what novice teachers experience when they enter the profession. The CLIL approach obligates teachers to conceptualize their teaching: define the content, instructional strategies, methods, assessment, etc."…”

Analysis of CLIL-Related Research in School Settings: A Systematic Review

“…Notwithstanding the fact that Coyle et al (2010) proposed to explore affective factors related to teachers in terms of research with a Focus on teachers, it is the area of Pedagogies/didactic competence that has attracted more scientific interest (Ljalikova et al, 2021;Martínez Agudo & Fielden Burns, 2021). Since it is teachers who contribute to the shaping of the CLIL method and as such have become key players, the pedagogic quality of teachers has been put in the spotlight.…”

“…In the early implementation of CLIL, certain drawbacks were observed, such as the lack of collaboration and administrative support 6 (Mehisto et al, 2008), which continue to be the major challenge shared by CLIL teachers (Lorenzo & Granados, 2020;Mearns & Graaff, 2018;Nieto Moreno de Diezmas, 2019;Pappa et al, 2019). In the qualitative analysis of CLIL teachers' narratives in relation to their teaching experiences in Estonia (Ljalikova et al, 2021), relative loneliness and the extreme importance of administrative support and collaboration were shared by all the stakeholders. This CLIL teachers' loneliness seems to be a common feature in other educational environments.…”

The role of university Knowledge Transfer Offices: Not just commercialize research outputs!

“…El análisis narrativo permite reestructurar la experiencia perceptiva de una persona reorganizando los recuerdos sobre los eventos relacionados con algún aspecto de su vida, con base en la interacción que tiene con diferentes stakeholders (Ljalikova et al, 2021).…”

“…Por otra parte, al considerar la naturaleza intangible del fenómeno de investigación, se empelará como método complementario el análisis narrativo de ideas generadas, de tal forma que se obtenga una percepción de las experiencias personales de los individuos que pueden ser estudiadas dentro de circunstancias de vida únicas y un contexto particular (Ljalikova et al, 2021).…”