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:ezana.habte-gabr@uexternado.edu.co or habterod@rocketmail.com

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 full-fledged 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.

Please check the CLIL - Teaching Other Subject Through English course at Pilgrims website.