Multilinguismo, CLIL e innovazione didattica - Libera Università di ...

Challenges in the re-redistribution of the teacher’s
roles: responsibilities and competences of the CLIL
teacher
Luisella Leonzini – University of Trieste
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role/s, responsibilities, and competences the
content teacher should be endowed with and activate when s/he engages in the challenging
experience of the CLIL journey. By promoting negotiation and flexibility, the
CLIL approach triggers both learner and teacher motivation and activation, it contributes
to developing learners’ content acquisition and linguistic competence and teachers’
expertise. Language becomes a precious tool to improve learners’ receptive and productive
skills as well as to prompt subject-oriented acquisition and performance. Teachers
become a precious resource and key figures who are given the responsibility to build a
dynamic and interactive environment aimed at triggering learners’ proficiency.
In this paper I will examine how two secondary schools in Trieste have experienced
their ten-year CLIL projects. I will base my analysis on how two physics teachers, each
belonging to one of the schools mentioned, have been trained, how hard it had been for
them to experiment new methodologies, and to find suitable materials.
Keywords: responsibilities, competence, knowledge, CLIL, negotiation, flexibility
The CLIL approach fosters an innovative pedagogical environment which
integrates the teaching and learning of content with the teaching and learning
of a non-native language. In a subject-oriented approach, CLIL teachers use
the foreign language as a vehicle to achieve subject knowledge. As Deller &
Price (2007) pointed out, in the CLIL context language becomes the means by
which new information is given to promote content acquisition. This does not
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