Learning to Become Content and Language Integrated Learning Teachers in Hong Kong: Preservice Science Teachers' Beliefs and Practices

• In Event: Equipping Teachers With Educational Responsibility Awareness for a Heteroglossic Approach to Content and Language Integrated Learning

Abstract

Objectives
In Hong Kong, many students face the challenge of learning science through a foreign language, English. This is difficult because science genres have distinctive communicative goals, discourse structures and lexico-grammatical features that are different from daily language (Rose & Martin, 2012). To tackle the problem, some science teacher education programmes offer training on CLIL to integrate explicit teaching of science language. This study examines the beliefs and practices of three pre-service science teachers during the teaching practicum and explores how different practicum experiences might affect the way they learn to become CLIL teachers.

Theoretical framework
The study draws upon activity theory (Engeström, 2015) to conduct a holistic and contextualised analysis of teachers’ beliefs and practices. As emerging CLIL teachers, these pre-service science teachers bring their own schooling, teacher training and teaching experience into the teaching practicum. These past experiences, together with the contextual factors in the practicum system, affect their beliefs about CLIL and how they might put their beliefs into practice. Activity theory provides a systematic approach to examine the personal and contextual factors that influence the teaching activity. Figure 1 illustrates the complexity of these relationships.

Methods and data sources
The study adopts a qualitative multiple case study design (Stake, 2005). Every pre-service teacher is regarded as a case and three case teachers are purposefully selected from a science teacher education programme in a public university in Hong Kong. Table 1 presents the profile of participants. Multiple data collection methods including interview, lesson observation and document are used to gather rich data from each case teacher during the teaching practicum.

Results
The research findings show that teachers’ beliefs about CLIL mainly include beliefs about subject (self-efficacy and role as a CLIL teacher), tool (CLIL teaching strategies), object (value and purpose of CLIL), rule (school language and learning policy), community (student diversity and ability), and division of labour (cross-curricular teacher collaboration). The first three aspects are greatly affected by teachers’ schooling and teacher training experience, while the latter three aspects are more influenced by the environment of practicum schools. Compared to personal factors, contextual factors play a bigger role in impacting teachers’ CLIL pedagogical practices during the teaching practicum.

Significance of the study
Theoretically, the study uses activity theory to reveal the social and historical dimension of teacher cognition (Borg, 2019). Teachers’ practices are related to not only what they think at present in the immediate classroom setting but also their personal histories and the broader socio-cultural expectations of teachers and teaching. Pedagogically, the study shows that CLIL teacher education should place greater emphasis on the field experience and provide pre-service teachers with tools to analyse their teaching activity system and its impact on their beliefs and practices. This will help them become reflective teachers and develop CLIL lessons that meet the learning needs of students.

Author

• Ruohan Wang, University of Hong Kong