Policy Recommendations

CLILNetLE aims to offer guidance into how CLIL practice can be improved through a clearer focus on BMDLs. Over the four years of the Action, we have engaged with many teachers and teacher educators, as well as policy makers and publishers/materials creators, to find out what is needed at school-level and how our work across 35 countries might help inform practice.

Here are our suggestions:

Policy recommendations for the promotion of bi- andmultilingual disciplinary literacies (BMDLS) at schools

Cross-cutting Principles

The integration of content and language must be planned, visible and assessable so that disciplinary literacies are not left implicit.
Multimodal and trans-semiotic resources used as part of teaching and learning (images, diagrams, graphs, maps, symbols, gestures,video, spatial layout) are forms of disciplinary knowledge and should be taught and used as such.
Inclusive, critical and digitally informed engagement with disciplinary perspectives should be embedded in learning. This enables learners to compare sources from in and outside the classroom, identify representation gaps and evaluate evidence responsibly, including with AI where appropriate.

And here are some more specific recommendations, depending on who you are:

Publishers and Classroom Materials Designers – our key message is...

To empower our school-leavers to use their language(s) for academic and professional practices, we must provide explicit teaching towards the development of BMDLs. This requires a sustained focus on diverse languages, modes, technological and critical practices and cannot be achieved just through exposure to content alone. Collaboration among teachers across disciplines ensures balanced sequencing of language and content outcomes across the curriculum and helps our learners thrive in a dynamic world.

Teachers – our key message is:

Plan collaboratively to identify BMDL demands within subjects, to develop a common understanding of the roles of languages and content knowledge and to share materials as open educational resources wherever possible, both in and beyond school contexts.
Teach core aspects of the functional-textual dimension of BMDLs explicitly; this includes Cognitive Discourse Functions, like define, explain, evaluate, etc. in discipline-specific ways.
Include multimodal approaches (visuals, diagrams, gestures, digital media, symbols) for meaning-making in teaching and learning.
Ensure that scaffolding for content and for language is used appropriately to ensure that the cognitive challenge remains appropriate; use frames, visuals, graphic organisers, etc., if required, to reduce linguistic barriers in the CLIL language while keeping cognitive challenge high.
Make use of learners’ experiences in out-of-school and digital uses of their CLIL target language(s) for developing BMDLs

Pitfalls to avoid

Lowering disciplinary rigour when reducing language load — reduce barriers but keep thinking complex
Assuming that vocabulary lists are adequate forms of language support
Assuming that disciplinary content and language are learnt implicitly through exposure

Publishers and classroom materials designers – our key message is:

High-quality CLIL resources support teachers and learners in successfully developing the BMDLs associated with a discipline or profession. This includes knowing how to evaluate knowledge, how to use language and other modes (e.g., visual, spatial) to communicate this knowledge, how to navigate the different languages they know and use, and how to use technology in discipline-appropriate ways.

Top 5 Actions

Co-develop materials with subject and language experts to ensure that the knowledge and (multimodal) language used to express it is appropriate to the discipline and that the use of technology and the assessment criteria also reflect this.
Make disciplinary language use explicit in all relevant educational languages, by providing models of language use and success criteria.
Treat visuals, diagrams, graphs, tables, maps, symbols, gestures, and videos not just as supports or tools to access disciplinary knowledge, but as texts to be interpreted, critiqued and produced by learners as evidence of their learning.
Design purposeful bi-/plurilingual perspectives to clarify concepts and advance precise disciplinary communication in the CLIL language.
Embed inclusive, critical, and digitally responsible tasks (e.g., compare perspectives, check source reliability, use AI ethically and responsibly).

Pitfalls to avoid

Treating the use of multimodality as a means of engagement, rather than as an opportunity to develop or demonstrate knowledge
Assuming that providing vocabulary lists of terms or concepts is sufficient for teaching BMDLs
Aiming for monolingual materials exclusively in the CLIL target language

Teacher educators – our key message is:

Future and practising teachers need to be made aware of the multidimensionality of BMDLs early in their pre-service teacher education toensure that all school-based teaching and learning is founded on the co-development of language and content learning outcomes.

Top 5 Actions

Ensure teacher education includes support for learner teachers to identify (bi- andmultilingual) disciplinary literacies demands in their subjects and tounderstand the role of language for all learning.
Highlight the language-content interface in all teaching, not just CLIL.
Provide tools for critical and digital literacy dimensions, including responsible and ethical AI use, within disciplinary tasks.
Foster teachers’ awareness and competence of connecting subject-specific classroom learning to learners’ extramural digital practices and multilingual lifeworlds.
Embed CLIL competencies in pre-service teacher education programs and in specialist in-service training.
Ensure that assessment literacy for BMDLs is developed so that assessment of disciplinary knowledge includes the explicit assessment of language and communication appropriate to the subject area, as well as the age and stage of learners.

Pitfalls to avoid

Treating CLIL as an “add-on” separate from disciplinary learning in the main language of schooling
Overlooking assessment literacy in establishing learner competences in BMDLs

School leadership and educational governors – our key message is:

Successful integration of BMDLs into educational practice requires sustained support from school leaders for teaching staff. This involves the provision of clear guidelines for teaching and learning, of resources, including time, to allow for the sharing of expertise and practices. Such sharing should occur across subject boundaries and individual classrooms and schools to reflect the cross-cutting nature of BMDLs.

Top 5 Actions

Treating interdisciplinary collaboration among teachers across language and content areas as optional or ad hoc
Purchasing ‘off-the-shelf’ CLIL materials that are not aligned with national curricula or learner needs
Supporting teachers to integrate published resources and other sources of knowledge to support meaning-making in classrooms

To embed our recommendations, Dr Craig Neville from CLILNetLE conducted a survey of existing curricula, which you can read here. We are constantly refining our recommendations but the current forms can be downloaded from here.