One recent theme in research on CLIL concerns the content-and-language-integrative nature of this educational approach. Conceptually, several propositions have been made in this regard, yet these do not translate into classroom practice easily. One notion allowing conceptual integration while appearing to be tangible for practitioners is the construct of cognitive discourse functions (CDFs; Dalton-Puffer, 2013). Assuming that CDFs present the generic linguistic manifestation of cognitive processes essential to learning and teaching, this concept has been shown to be tightly linked to history skills (see Dalton-Puffer & Bauer-Marschallinger, 2019). Thus far, however, this construct has not been operationalized for pedagogical use, and generally, more research is needed concerning the nexus of content-and-language-integrative learning, pedagogical practice, and didactic materials.
This presentation reports on such a study, which aimed at operationalizing the CDF construct in the context of upper secondary CLIL history education while also gaining insights into the theoretical underpinnings of content and language integration. For this endeavour, this study adopted a design-based research approach (see, e.g., McKenny & Reeves, 2012). As such, a team of researcher and practitioners systematically developed transdisciplinary CLIL materials and design principles over several research cycles, using interviews, written learner performances, and classroom observations for data collection.
The findings show that CDFs present an ecologically valid and effective approach to integrate content and language learning, confirming claims of, for example, Morton (2020) or Nashaat Sobhy (2018), amongst others. However, the results also indicate that several conditions need to be met in order to work successfully with this concept in upper secondary CLIL history education. These include comprehensive scaffolding strategies, methods of differentiated instruction, and ensuring that the links between the linguistic support and the subject discipline are made explicit. This presentation will further zoom in on these transdisciplinary links and offers further specifications for the CDF construct from the perspective of history as a discipline. While agreeing that the CDF construct serves as a useful and manageable tool for research (see, e.g., Lorenzo, 2017), the results of this study also point to the necessity of such discipline-specific elaborations.
References:
Dalton-Puffer, C. (2013). A construct of cognitive discourse functions for conceptualising content-language integration in CLIL and multilingual education. European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 99.
Dalton-Puffer, C., & Bauer-Marschallinger, S. (2019). Cognitive Discourse Functions meet Historical Competences: Towards an integrated pedagogy in CLIL history education. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 7(1), 30-60.
Lorenzo, F. (2017). Historical literacy in bilingual settings: Cognitive academic language in CLIL history narratives. Linguistics and Education, 37, 32–41.
McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2012). Conducting educational design research. Routledge.
Morton, T. (2020). Cognitive Discourse Functions: A Bridge between Content, Literacy and Language for Teaching and Assessment in CLIL. CLIL. Journal of Innovation and Research in Plurilingual and Pluricultural Education, 3(1), 7-17.
Nashaat Sobhy, N. (2018). Operationalizing "Defining" from a Cognitive Discourse Perspective for Learners' Use. In S. Anwaruddin (Ed.), Knowledge Mobilization in TESOL (pp. 94–112). Brill.
