Cognitive discourse functions in Austrian CLIL lessons: towards an empirical validation of the CDF Construct

Abstract

It is now widely recognized among educators that explicit attention to language is necessary in order to optimize both language and content learning in situations, such as CLIL, where learners, teachers or both operate in a second language. However, the requirement of attention to language sits uneasily with the fact that content-subject specialist teachers frequently feel unprepared to think and operate in linguistic dimensions. In an attempt to create a conceptualisation that would speak to subject teachers in terms that are meaningful to them from within their own subjects, a Construct of Cognitive Discourse Functions (henceforth CDFs) has been proposed. This construct is theoretically founded in both educational curriculum theory and linguistic pragmatics and consists of a seven-fold categorization of verbalizations which express acts of thinking about subject matter in the classroom (CLASSIFY, DEFINE, DESCRIBE, EVALUATE, EXPLAIN, EXPLORE, REPORT). As the theoretical background of the CDF Construct has been discussed at length elsewhere (Dalton-Puffer 2013, 2016), it will be presented only briefly at the outset of this article. The main purpose of this contribution is to report on steps taken towards an empirical validation of the CDF Construct. A total of four smaller-scale studies each focusing on the classroom discourse in one subject (biology, physics, economics, history) will be surveyed in order to find answers to the questions of whether CDFs actually occur in classroom interaction and if they do, which and to what extent. Comparisons to a small complementary study on a set of EFL lessons will be made where appropriate. Results show that CDFs are indeed a staple of teaching and learning in classroom-based education but are in no way equally distributed. Also, they are almost never the object of conscious attention. As a number of further questions remain yet to be answered on the way towards empirical validation of a fully articulated CDF Construct, these will be discussed in the conclusion of the article.

Characterising integrated content-language pedagogies of global perspectives teachers in Dutch bilingual schools

“…In terms of the Implemented Curriculum, our analysis of CDFs within Episodes revealed both similarities and differences with the Austrian findings of Dalton-Puffer et al (2018). A main similarity is that CDFs were a staple of teaching and learning, but that they are not equally distributed, occurring in varying degrees of frequency.…”

“…Within each of these Tasks, data was coded at the 'Episode Level'. An 'Episode' was defined as a 'longer stretch of talk serving one overall communicative function' (Dalton-Puffer et al, 2018). Each Episode was coded with one or more of Dalton-Puffer's (2013) seven basal CDF categories that best described the communicative intention.…”

Involving Students in Educational Design: How Student Voices Contribute to Shaping Transdisciplinary CLIL History Materials

“…2 These types are neither disjunct nor mutually exclusive, creating somewhat fuzzy categories, which, according to Dalton-Puffer (2013), would allow the accommodation of different (subject-) cultural models. This CDF-Construct has been empirically validated for different subjects in a number of MA-theses, summarized in Dalton-Puffer et al (2018). Furthermore, Dalton-Puffer and Bauer-Marschallinger (2019) have shown that the CDF-Construct is compatible with competency-based history education as conceptualized in the Austrian context, both from a theoretical and empirical point of view, indicating that CDFs could work well to operationalize the integration of subject and language learning.…”

With United Forces: How Design-Based Research can Link Theory and Practice in the Transdisciplinary Sphere of CLIL

“…This is now where the concept of Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs) comes in, which will be presented in more depth in the following section. CDFs can be defined as communicative patterns that are routinely used to express thought processes and appear to be an integral part of subject pedagogies, too (Dalton-Puffer et al, 2018). These language patterns very often overlap with curricular Bauer-Marschallinger, S. subject goals, which tend to be expressed with the help of performative verbs, as exemplified by the following samples taken from the Austrian curriculum for upper secondary history education (Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, 2014):…”