Exploring professional collaboration at the boundary between content and language teaching from a CHAT approach

Abstract

Different ways in which the integration of content and language emerges within higher education language policies and classroom teaching and learning are well studied in the literature, as are methods and techniques that could be useful in classrooms to scaffold the accomplishment of dual learning objectives. However very little attention has been paid to exploring the complexities emerging during collaboration at the boundary between teaching professionals from different areas of expertise, and this is potentially even more so in higher education. Attending to this gap, this article presents the first results of a professional development experience being carried out at a Catalan university promoting English medium instruction, which aimed at increasing collaboration between language and subject lecturers at the boundary of content and language teaching across degree programs. The experience involved formalised pairing-up of content and language specialists working within the same degree program for focussed discussion on the planning and implementation of their respective subjects. The experience provides insight into teacher cognition – or what teachers think, know, and believe, and the relationship this potentially has with their classroom action – and into how interdisciplinary dialogue may be supported to prompt its transformation.

Keywords

• higher education CLIL
• interdisciplinary dialogue
• teacher cognition
• cultural historical activity theory (CHAT)