Co-teaching among English pre-service teachers for integrated STEAM+CLIL education

Abstract

In Spain, primary education teachers teaching subject matter in a foreign language through Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) require new pedagogical competencies. Teaching in a second language often poses problems, as many teachers have no specific training in CLIL and often wish to gain greater self-confidence when teaching some subjects, for example, Natural Sciences, in a foreign language. In that scenario, two general objectives are proposed in this study within the framework of pre-service CLIL teacher training: to examine the impact of a co-teaching programme on the development of the pedagogical competences of pre-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers engaged in STEAM+CLIL integrated education; and 2) to study the impact of the programme on the perceived self-confidence of pre-service teachers when teaching CLIL. The results of this research involving three experimental cohorts of pre-service teachers showed an improvement in their pedagogical competencies at designing integrated STEAM+CLIL didactic units, compared to the respective control groups; and an increase in their perceived self-confidence when teaching EFL through CLIL. These results point towards an alternative pathway for primary school teacher training in a foreign language, particularly English. FUNDING INFORMATION. This research was funded by the European Commission which financed the research project STEAM Education and Foreign Language Learning in Europe - SeLFIE (2020-1-ES01-KA201-081850).