Teachers Talking About CLIL Pedagogy: Transforming Teacher Practices Through Collaborative Autoethnography

Abstract

This collaborative autoethnographic (CAE) study has investigated how three tertiary-level teachers of an English language lecture preparation course in a Japanese university engaged with each other over a two-year period from 2020 to 2022 regarding their approaches to the adoption of a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach to syllabus design and teaching. With two new teachers based in a newly established department and the other teacher in a more established department, insights were gained through the unfolding online CAE and face-to-face discourse into their respective thoughts and motivations underpinning their pedagogical philosophies and interpretations of the CLIL approach to meet their departmental and students' requirements. Key findings revealed that teacher backgrounds and experience with CLIL, as well as institutional shifts in curriculum aims, have all directly and indirectly shaped current course design and pedagogy and revealed similarities and differences in interpretations of CLIL over time. Of significance is how the CAE itself emerged as a vital community-building forum for the teachers themselves and acted as a site for varying levels of transformation in their pedagogical practices.