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Maintaining Professional Identity in CLIL Instruction
Ezana Habte-Gabr, Ethiopia
Ezana Habte-Gabr presently teaches English at Universidad Externado de Colombia in
Bogota. He has taught CLIL courses in Geography and the other Social Sciences at schools
and univerisites.E-mail:[email protected] or [email protected]
CLIL is increasingly gaining acceptance around the world as it seems to meet the
contemporary learning styles which are heavily influenced by multimedia and internet,
which tend to engage heavily language learners more in content as opposed to language
structure and grammar. As CLIL transcends the language learning spectrum, instructional
methodology naturally raises questions about the instructor’s professional identity as to
whether one is actually a content or language teacher. While CLIL theory clearly notes that
simultaneous learning is underway, I would suggest, based on my experience as a CLIL
instructor that issues revolving professional identity are probed through the process and
require personal and administrative considerations for the teacher sentiments regarding
pertinence and collegial relationships within the language and content domains, generating
an interior sense of professional order. In the end, the a sense of order depends on the actual
instructor realizing language and content accomplishments and accepting that CLIL is an
approach requiring a lengthy process of comprehension within learning institutions given
its multifaceted and interdisciplinary nature. Finally, I suggest, based on my own
professional and personal life, which CLIL tends to generate a sense of order in that it
formalizes diverse professional and personal life experiences under a pedagogical
approach.
A couple of years ago at a CLIL conference in the Netherlands, a university physics teacher
from Britain and myself found ourselves easily developing a professional rapport as we
were a minority amongst the participants as we were non-linguists “doing” CLIL as
teachers and as members of research groups. We discovered that while being on the cutting
edge of CLIL in higher education institutions, we were tended to suffer from professional
identity crises, as it was not always easy as we dealt with two distinct collegial
relationships, namely language and content. Furthermore, we realized that personal
circumstances such as having to teach in another country and also being faced with
language difficulties in our respective university settings brought us to CLIL. While in
agreement being in agreement that we were doing well for humanity, if we were doing well
to ourselves!!!
The CLIL community in higher education seems to have drifted into the approach
subconsciously due to various reasons which include being more proficient in English than
in Spanish, complying with institutional bilingual policies or actually being aware of the
success of CLIL and implementing a policy. Those pertaining to the latter category
generally consist of academic program designers or applied linguists who are a minority in
the CLIL community. Many of us were not aware of our pertinence to this community as
we are not trained in applied linguistic or for that matter pedagogy. I found myself first
teaching English at the university level in Colombia for the reason that, my English is
substantially better than my Spanish and that, I had undergone my university education in
the United States. Hence, I was able to enhance English levels given my native contact with
the language. This resulted in my becoming an EFL instructor, empirically exposing me to
language teaching context. This would be my first sense a disequilibrium between order
and disorder in my professional life – a geographer turned English teacher. Overtime, I
realized that this was not uncommon in Colombia. It is not uncommon to meet former
business majors from US universities teaching English, given their usage of the language in
the academic context.
The existence of a community of teachers who teach English with other academic
backgrounds increasingly became apparent to me. Creativity, innovativeness and the
willingness to study and teach English grammar are elements which distinguish the
community. Furthermore, while this community strikes me as being highly successful at the
school and university level, it also dwells on a sense of professional uncertainty “When will
I actually go back to my profession” or even considering remaining in the world of English
teaching given their success rate particularly in TOEFL and IELTS preparation, tests which
require being coached by individuals who had contact with the native English academic
context. At a personal level, while being professionally successful in a country which was
experiencing a 20% unemployment rate and meeting family needs, I was undoubtedly
successful. However, in the academic world one is not completely satisfied if one is unable
to apply what they learned as an undergraduate or graduate student. Therefore, I was faced
with the question “how do I incorporate geography, my discipline into my academic life?”
It occurred to me that disciplines are social constructs and one can really incorporate any
discipline when teaching English. Initially, I taught many private English courses to people
of all ages and I decided to use material on geography as basic texts and convince my
students that they were in for a deal, language along with culture. Subsequently, as a
university instructor, I began offering geography courses in English as electives, taking
advantage of the institution’s pursuit to be bilingual. In addition developing and teaching
courses, I found myself in the midst of a research project on CLIL learning and teaching
methodology. This led me to my next professional identity milieu, now a geography teacher
and a researcher in CLIL? Furthermore, after over eight years, I was no longer teaching
IELTS and TOEFL preparatory courses and subsequently, it took a year to convince
students and staff that I no longer taught these courses nor did academic translations. I had
been transferred and now am a university geography instructor.
Had I not finally obtained my goal in Colombia, to be professionally recognized a
geographer? Yes, indeed, but it suddenly dawned upon me that a professional in her or her
forties, is not only identified by degrees, but largely by professional experience. The very
little professional writing I had done was related to CLIL, the geography courses I
developed and teach were to facilitate CLIL. Hence, I am a Geography and English teacher.
I recall Else Hamayan of the Illinois learning Institute and expert on CLIL stressing the
importance of sanely juxtaposing by accepting that one could be both a language and
content teacher through CLIL as CLIL seeks to simultaneously teach language and content.
The challenge is convincing those around oneself that they are both an English and Content
teacher, geography being the content in my case. It is not easy to “throw the baby out with
the bath water”, while teaching geography in English, I am going to always be an English
teacher as well. My students are developing their academic English skills in their classes
and my teaching methodology has been established along the CLIL lines, utilizing process
writing and sheltered teaching to mention a few. Furthermore, while now being in a fullfledged content area at the university level, which requires me to research, my experience
has become CLIL. Each context is distinct and requires administrative considerations in
accommodating CLIL inclined staff and researchers. In the Colombian context for instance,
there is agreement over the importance of CLIL in all educational settings. Even in public
or state schools, were English courses have been limited to basic grammar; teachers are
talking about benefits of CLIL. Teachers who do not come from language backgrounds are
able to obtain teaching permits through exams, allowing them to teach English in addition
to their content area. It seems that interdisciplinary areas such as CLIL must be receive
broader administrative recognition for the CLIL teacher to really feel and be an effective
and using this multifaceted approach towards learning in teaching which many of us
stumbled upon and have internalized.
The CLIL - Teaching Other Subject Through English course can be viewed here.