Analysis of CLIL teaching sequences for Primary Education

Abstract

This work deals with a meta-evaluation of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teaching sequences (N=46) for Primary education provided by the Andalusian Consejería de Educación, Spain, in German and English. The objective is to present an analysis of the sequences concerning the integration of CLIL methodological principles throughout the theory-based reviews by pre-service teachers (n=42) who attended (2020-21) the subject AICLE I: Fundamentos y Propuestas Curriculares para el Aula de Primaria in German or in English of the Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education at the University of Cádiz. This is a mixed-methods research with an exploratory sequential design, in which the CIPMA questionnaire (Custodio and García Ramos, 2020) was adapted to evaluate the sequences. Also, a focus group was carried out along with a significant representation of informants. The results reveal that, although the average evaluations of the sequences vary according to the foreign language (German: 1.78; English: 3.72), the order of scoring of the questionnaire dimensions is almost identical: Elementos Fundamentales de AICLE or Metodología; Recursos; and Evaluación. Nonetheless, the sequences do not integrate some CLIL methodological principles: resources (teaching materials related to real-life situations; the use of ICT to promote interaction and self-learning; etc.) and assessment (simplification or reduction of the content; summative and formative evaluation strategies; etc.). The difficulty of some activities is noteworthy as well as the inadequate treatment of the target languages, mainly German, regarding primary school students’ linguistic skills.