The missing C: addressing criticality in CLIL

Abstract

ABSTRACT Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a popular teaching approach that is being enthusiastically adopted across Japan (Ikeda, M. 2019. “CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education.” In Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning: The Case of Japan, edited by H. Reinders, R. Hayo, and S. Nakamura, 23–45. Palgrave Learning). CLIL is built on a 4Cs framework: Content, communication, cognition and culture (Coyle, D. 2007. “Content and Language Integrated Learning: Towards a Connected Research Agenda for CLIL Pedagogies.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10 (5): 543–562), addressing and nurturing all four domains. While CLIL has since extended its tenets beyond the 4Cs and now adopts a more holistic, integrated, multimodal pluriliteracies perspective (Meyer, O., D. Coyle, A. Halbach, K. Schuck, and T. Ting. 2015. “A Pluriliteracies Approach to Content and Language Integrated Learning – Mapping Learner Progression in Knowledge Construction and Meaning-Making.” Language, Culture and Curriculum 28 (1): 41–57; Meyer, O., and D. Coyle. 2017. “Pluriliteracies Teaching for Learning: Conceptualizing Progression for Deeper Learning in Literacies Development.” European Journal of Applied Linguistics 5 (2): 199–222), the 4Cs ideals are still integral in understanding CLIL, and in this paper the author extends its importance and suggests the addition of the fifth C, that of criticality. Without the fifth C, CLIL remains a contentious teaching approach in Japan, given that it is framed within neoliberal goals and discourse. In the current framework, language is deemed largely as a tool that allows one to cultivate the four domains, assuring language/content learning and possibly socio-economic advancement. However, as is, incongruencies in ideologies and conceptualizations conveyed via different languages are not taken up sufficiently, and what’s more, problematized and challenged. This paper addresses this lack and calls for the fifth C to make CLIL in Japan an even more robust, holistic and meaningful language teaching approach.