With United Forces: How Design-Based Research can Link Theory and Practice in the Transdisciplinary Sphere of CLIL

Abstract

Die vorliegende Studie soll veranschaulichen, wie Design-Based Research (DBR) im transdisziplinären Raum, der für CLIL bezeichnend ist, dazu beitragen kann, Theorie und Praxis besser zu verschränken. Diese Studie stellt den ersten Forschungszyklus eines Dissertationsprojekts dar, welches die Integration von Sprachund Fachlernen im englischsprachigen Geschichtsunterricht der Sekundarstufe II näher beleuchtet. Genauer gesagt versucht dieses Forschungsprojekt Design Prinzipien für CLIL Lehr-und Lernmaterialien zu identifizieren, welche sowohl die Entwicklung fachlicher Kompetenzen als auch sprachlicher Kompetenzen fördern. Zu diesem Zweck bedient sich diese Studie an Dalton-Puffers (2013) Konstrukt kognitiver Diskursfunktionen (CDFs), welches sieben zentrale akademische Sprachfunktionen definiert und sehr eng mit historischen Kompetenzen verbunden zu sein scheint. Im Zuge der Studie entwickelten ein Team bestehend aus Lehrperson und Forscherin systematisch CDF-basierte, kompetenzorientierte Materialien, welche im regulären Unterricht der Lehrperson angewandt und kontinuierlich evaluiert wurden. Zur Evaluierung dienten Unterrichtsbeobachtung, Interviews mit Schülerinnen und Lehrperson sowie schriftliche Aufgabenstellungen. Die Ergebnisse dieses ersten Forschungszykluses suggerieren, dass SchülerInnen oftmals nicht bewusst ist, wie Sprach-und Fachlernen verbunden sein kann, obwohl sie durchaus Probleme damit haben, komplexere, geschichtliche Inhalte auszudrücken. Im Allgemeinen reagierten die Lehrperson und auch die Schülerinnen durchwegs positiv auf die durchgeführte Intervention, sie zeigten aber auch Raum für Verbesserung auf, wie etwa eine durchgängigere und ausgewogenere Verflechtung von Sprach-und Fachlernen.

Involving Students in Educational Design: How Student Voices Contribute to Shaping Transdisciplinary CLIL History Materials

“…Moreover, the students did not have any ideas how content and language could be integrated in classroom materials apart from clarifying vocabulary. This reflects their understanding of content and language integration, which seems limited to the lexical level, a finding echoed in the pilot study (Bauer-Marschallinger, 2019). This implies that only considering self-reported learner needs might not be enough when creating research-based materials that aim for content and language integration, but other sources such as teacher views or student performances should be taken into account, too (see Lo & Jeong, 2018).…”

“…Abbreviation for Content and Language Integrated Learning, which refers to "a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language"(Coyle et al, 2010, p. 1).2 For a full representation and discussion of the construct, seeDalton- Puffer (2013.3 For more information on the operationalization of the CDF-Construct for the design of history materials, see Bauer-Marschallinger (in preparation). Some illustrative examples can also be found in Bauer-Marschallinger (2019).4 An obligatory minimum of 72 lessons of CLIL per year is now anchored in the curriculum of this school type (see Austrian Federal Ministry for Education[2014]).5 In Austria, with some exceptions, teachers are qualified in two subjects.6 See Bauer-Marschallinger (2019) for more information and results of the pilot study.7 Some examples of the pilot materials are available inBauer- Marschallinger (2019). The materials of the main study will be published in Bauer-Marschallinger (in preparation).8 For the purpose of anonymization while also tracking the students' development, students created their own codes, consisting of certain letters of their and their caretakers first name as well as the learner's birth month.…”

Building Scientific Knowledge in English: Integrating Content, Cognition and Communication in Secondary School CLIL Biology

“…Such is the case for 'categorize' (Evnitskaya & Dalton-Puffer, 2020), 'define' (Nashaat-Sobhy, 2020; Llinares & Nashaat-Sobhy, 2021), 'describe' (Dalton-Puffer, 2004), 'evaluate' (Llinares & Dalton-Puffer, 2015;Whittaker & McCabe, 2023;Hasenberger, ongoing), 'explain' (Dalton-Puffer, 2004;Lose, 2007;Connolly, 2019), and 'predict' (a subcategory of 'explore') (Dalton-Puffer, 2007), though only a few have been validated in terms of usefulness by developing explicit teaching programmes. Work in this direction includes a study by Breeze and Gerns (2019) in a secondary-level CLIL history class, where some general CDF-related features were explicitly taught for 'describing' and 'explaining', four doctoral theses (Connolly, 2019;Gerns, 2021;Bauer-Marschallinger, 2022;Hasenberger, ongoing) and Nashaat-Sobhy's (2020) validated framework for working with the CDF 'defining' in the university setting. Classroom materials are now being developed to teach, scaffold and assess these CDFs in the CLIL classroom 1 (see Coetzee-Lachmann, 2019;DeBoer & Leontjev, 2020;Del Pozo & Llinares, 2021;Coyle et al, 2023).…”

“…Given the importance of validating explicit CDF-based teaching tools and verifying their effect not only on students' language but also on their content and cognitive learning (Badertscher & Bieri, 2009;Bauer-Marschallinger, 2022), the present paper aims to validate the CDF framework for comparing and establish whether explicitly teaching it in a CLIL science context can have a positive effect on students' subject knowledge. To do this, a classroom-based study was designed and executed with secondary CLIL biology students (7 th grade, age 12-13), who were previously divided into a study and a control group.…”

“…The novelty of this approach lies in its interdisciplinary nature, which offers content and language teachers a shared pedagogical tool that unites contributions from both disciplines, namely the notions of thinking skills in science and other subject education and the notion of discourse function in applied linguistics (Dalton-Puffer, 2013;Bauer-Marschallinger, 2022). Dalton-Puffer essentially identifies a 'zone of convergence' between content and language learning objectives, recognising that learning in school tends to occur through a limited set of cognitive operations (such as 'explain' or 'define'), which are expressed using a finite set of verbs.…”