Exploring CLIL in Turkish context: Teacher and student voices

Abstract

This mixed method study investigates the perceptions of teachers and students on Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) methodology and reports their relevant classroom practices within the Turkish context. With this in mind, a set of qualitative data was collected by means of semi-structured in-depth interviews, teacher documents and classroom observations, while the quantitative data was collected using a CLIL questionnaire. The participants included four teachers applying CLIL methodology and their 5th grade students. The qualitative results indicated that teachers view CLIL as a challenging but pedagogically beneficial teaching practice providing positive affective aspects for the students such as higher motivation and self-confidence. The quantitative results also showed that students had highly positive perceptions toward CLIL as they found CLIL lessons highly effective for their language development and the content knowledge. This study offers practical implications for CLIL teachers and CLIL programme designers.