Teacher-Researcher Reflection

At the end of the Project, the core teacher participants (in English, Math and Science) had individual semi-structured interviews with the project teaching consultant. They expressed positive comments on the collaboration between the school and the university including aspects such as the enhanced teacher capacity in implementing CLIL pedagogical activities in the school, the development of CLIL teacher pedagogical content knowledge which enabled them to facilitate South Asian students' improvement of academic content knowledge and academic English literacy, the raised academic language awareness in the students which has benefited their acquisition of the academic content knowledge in different subjects, the different language-related learning strategies introduced which help to foster South Asian students' learner autonomy and build up their confidence in future study, as well as the collaboration between teachers of different subjects in the school which has laid a solid foundation for the sustainability of the CLIL/LAC programs in the school and also set a good example for the future CLIL/LAC projects in other schools in Hong Kong.

The HKU-QEF Project has also benefited from the many constructive suggestions from the participating teachers which are summarised in the following aspects:

There should be earlier communications not only with the school and the teachers but also with the students which helps to inform students of the objectives of the project and prepare them for better participation of the project activities;
The genre-based pedagogy and the Teaching-Learning Cycle should be adapted according to the practical situation of the school curriculum by handling flexibly the different pedagogical stages and selecting suitable volume of teaching content according to the scheme-of-work of the subjects as well as the language proficiency levels and learning styles of the students. For example, "Detailed Reading" can be tried out in short texts at the beginning so that teachers may adopt it in different pedagogical stages (i.e. whenever there is text that the teacher deems difficult/important for the learning of the subject), and "Joint-construction" can be carried out during the practice stage as examples to guide students to answer longer questions in workbooks/tests;
It will be more effective for the project activities to be carried out from the beginning of students' secondary learning (e.g. from earlier grades such as Form 1). This is very necessary in the light of three aspects: 1) It helps students more to develop academic English literacy as early as possible as the language-related learning strategies are important for their learning of other subjects in the senior grades; 2) It takes time to allow the curriculum resources to take effect in the classroom practices of different subjects; and 3) The workload of both students and teachers in the senior grades will be very heavy which does not allow more curriculum resources to be tried out in the classroom teaching and learning practices;
The curriculum resources will have stronger and more positive impact on teaching and learning if the project is a whole-school program instead of one that involves only some subjects. This will not only benefit more teachers in other subjects and encourage smoother inter-subject collaboration but also avoids the misconception in some students that the language-related learning strategies are for the learning of some subjects only which limits their application of the strategies in learning other subjects in the school (e.g., The different academic functions should be useful for learning different school subjects, but some students thought mistakenly that those are strategies for Science or Math subjects but not for IH as the project did not involve subjects like IH).

By close and friendly cooperation with the core teacher participants, the project team members were able to observe their teaching behaviors and listen to their perception about the project activities and the impact of the project on their teacher professional development. The following reflection of one of the core teacher participants provided the project team with valuable feedback on the conceptualisation the development of CLIL teacher pedagogical content knowledge, the knowledge that influences the results of CLIL classroom practices, and the crucial factor that affects the success of future CLIL/LAC projects in Hong Kong schools.

T: But after participating in this program (HKU-QEF Project), I will re-read really carefully my own teaching content. Although it may have been very familiar to me already, it is possible that I might have omitted some parts during my teaching all these years...I will read the textbook really carefully to see actually how this particular sentence is expressed, or maybe when I need to explain this to my students, I will realise that they might have difficulty understanding it, and then I will handle it more carefully.

R: We've tried out these CLIL curriculum resources for a whole semester, right? Personally, have you gained anything useful?

T：Well, one of the gains is like what I just said, that is, when I prepare my lessons, I will think more about my students. Like, if they read this text, what can't they understand? And then I will think more about how I can deconstruct the text and help them to understand it.

R: Sounds like, you are a Science teacher and used to be very familiar with the Science content. But now, you've been changing. I mean, you'll add some language elements into your teaching, and you become more language-aware yourself?

T: Yes. Yes.

R: In terms of subject teaching, what have you learned from the Teacher Capacity-building Workshops, our collaboration during co-planning the lessons, and also the Medd Courses you are taking in HKU?

T: There've been changes in many aspects: maybe from the lesson planning at the beginning, I mean, since I start to plan the lesson, like how to design activities, maybe the worksheets or the teaching materials. For example, I had an assignment in my Medd Course and I selected a topic, analysed the language structure of the text and designed a worksheet for the students. In fact, the topic, a senior one, has already been taught before. But when I re-read it again from the very beginning, I mean, once again I found that, in fact we can use this pedagogy. The language-related pedagogy has actually helped the students to learn more about the topic.

R:You mean you have been very familiar with the Science subject you teach after teaching several rounds?

T: Yes, especially those in Form 3. But I seldom really read the textbook and see how the content is expressed as everything has been, maybe, in our words, internalised. So, even when I read the textbook, I would not read it in detail and then work out, say, how the subject content is written sentence by sentence.

R: You said joining the HKU-QEF Project has helped you understand more about your students' performance in their assessments?

T: Yes. Yes. Before joining this project, I would think, "Hmm, why can't they answer the questions? They didn't review the lessons!" I mean, very quickly you'll have feelings like "They didn't review the lessons" or "Why can't they understand what has just been taught?!" But now, if I think about all this again, I'll see, "Well, they might have failed to understand even the question itself." In fact, many times I've heard my students say "I got it as soon as you explained it". And I might feel like, "Why couldn't you understand it until I explained it? Are you so dumb?" But actually it might be because I explained the question in another way (e.g. by identifying the key question prompts) and students were then able to get it, "Oh, the question is actually asking something about this".

T: All these (language-related) resources are something I seldom touched upon before because in teaching I used to focus mostly on the content of my subject and seldom paid attention to the language aspects, especially those language-related elements (e.g. the analysis of text type structure, academic functions and sentence patterns as well as the different types of academic vocabulary) on the PPT. And then it becomes like, when students read the materials, they were somewhat surprised, "Wow, Science can be learned in this way."

The teacher's reflection as well as the feedback from the South Asian students provide CLIL teacher education with important implication that it does need a process for both CLIL teachers and their students to accept and to get accustomed to the CLIL curriculum resources including the pedagogy and the teaching materials. This is not an easy process; however, it does not mean the project is unworkable. Teachers need to have administrative support from the school as well as culturally compatible guidance from the project team advisers. In the HKU-QEF Project, apart from the support from the school principals, the participating teachers received regular teacher training opportunities during which university researchers shared with them helpful resources and answered their questions about CLIL. They were also able to have consistent collaboration with the project members in co-constructing CLIL curriculum resources which built up a platform for them to try out their pedagogical thinking and strategies.

The diagram below indicates, as a professional science teacher, s/he has the knowledge base which consists of content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge of the subject interacting with the knowledge of context, knowledge of curriculum as well as knowledge of students. Through participating in the HKU-QEF Project, the (Science) teacher's knowledge base started to transform. With the acquisition of the language-related content and pedagogical knowledge and strategies (e.g., genre-based pedagogy and the Teaching-Learning Cycle, etc.) through the Teacher Capacity-building Workshops and the co-lesson-planning with the project members, the teacher's knowledge base increased with the acquisition of part of the content and pedagogical knowledge of language teachers which can be reflected in the raised language awareness in the Science teacher. It should be noted that such transformation does not aim at two paralleled pedagogical practices in the CLIL classroom; it does not mean the Science teacher teaching English in Science lessons in place of the language teacher. Rather, it is the application of the target language (i.e. English) to enable students to better comprehend the Science subject. The pedagogical content knowledge of the Science teacher starts to transform to the pedagogical content knowledge of a CLIL teacher which is not the simple addition of two types of knowledge but a strategic integration which results in interaction between different types of knowledge in the CLIL knowledge base. For example, the introduction of the content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge of language teachers triggered the science teacher's reflection on her content knowledge (which she has been very familiar with but might have omitted some parts) and her knowledge of students (e.g. their diverse background and language proficiency levels) as well as the knowledge of curriculum (e.g. assessment requirements) etc. The ongoing changing of the CLIL knowledge base has driven her to adjust her pedagogical knowledge (e.g. to take students' language proficiency into consideration when planning lessons, pay more attention to text analysis and guide students to identify question prompts in tests, etc.). Hence, the transformed pedagogical content knowledge (from Science teacher PCK to CLIL teacher PCK) enabled the teacher to scaffold the students to enhance their development of both academic content knowledge and academic English literacy in their EMI subject learning.

Transformed CLILTeacher Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in HKU-QEF Project

Figure adapted from "Model of CLIL teacher PCK" by Lin, He & Liu (2013)