Using Children’s Literature to Teach the 4Cs of CLIL: A Systematic Review of EFL Studies

To reference this article (APA) / Para citar este artículo (APA) / Para citar este artigo (APA) Graham, K. M., Mathews, S. D., & Eslami, Z. R. (2020). Using children’s literature to teach the 4Cs of CLIL: A systematic review of EFL studies. Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated Learning, 13(2), 163–189. https://doi.org/10.5294/laclil.2020.13.2.2 Using Children’s Literature to Teach the 4Cs of CLIL: A Systematic Review of EFL Studies


Introduction
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), a form of teaching targeting content and language outcomes in contexts where the language of instruction is not used by the majority, is becoming a popular method for teaching and learning English as a foreign language (EFL) around the world (Brinton & Snow, 2017;Ellison, 2019). However, recent reviews have raised several concerns about CLIL in terms of academic and social outcomes. For one, CLIL far from guarantees superior learning outcomes for language and content when compared with more traditional forms of teaching (Graham et al., 2018). There are also concerns about the effect of CLIL on attitudes toward local languages and cultures (Graham & Eslami, 2019). Though teaching strategies and frameworks for simultaneously teaching language and content have been explored in order to mitigate these issues, it seems one type of material has been overlooked and under researched-the use of children's literature.
Children's literature, or books written specifically with a young audience in mind, has shown to be a promising solution for addressing many dimensions of learning in English-dominant contexts with English first language (EL1) learners (e.g., Hodges et al., 2018;McAndrew et al., 2017;Newstreet et al., 2019;Wasik et al., 2016) and English as a second language (ESL) learners (Fitton et al., 2018). Yet, in contrast to these English-dominant contexts, our search of the literature has revealed a lack of attention toward the use of children's literature in CLIL classrooms. Though EL1 and ESL literature suggest children's literature as a way to support the goals of CLIL known as the 4Cs-content, communication, cognition, and culture-it cannot be assumed that what works with students in English-dominant contexts will also work in CLIL contexts, where students typically have limited exposure Theoretical framework: 4Cs of CLIL and children's literature CLIL has been implemented in classrooms around the world as an alternative to traditional language teaching (see Graham et al., 2018, for a review). The popularity of CLIL may be connected to its ability to address multiple learning outcomes simultaneously (Lightbown, 2014). Coyle et al. (2010) suggest that these multiple outcomes of CLIL should target 4Cs: content, communication, cognition, and culture.
Content addresses the knowledge students should gain from a lesson, and communication could be connected to language outcomes. These two dimensions are explicit in CLIL's name and are the main goals of its implementation in most contexts. However, the 4Cs require that learning go beyond content and language and also address cognition and culture. Cognition encompasses higher-level thinking, such as the development of critical thinking skills, and culture "nurtures an appreciation of oneself and the potential for understanding and appreciating others" (Ellison, 2019, p. 249). Although there seems to be no research directly connecting the 4Cs of CLIL to children's literature, there is evidence that children's literature may be effective in addressing each of its four dimensions.

Content
Children's literature has been shown to offer many opportunities to engage with content and build knowledge in a variety of subjects taught in English-dominant contexts, such as math (McAndrew et al., 2017;Furner, 2018;White, 2016) and science (McLean et al., 2015;Smolkin et al., 2009)  by the teacher (Smolkin et al., 2009). These explanations in text allow students to take time to understand the concept and are written in a more approachable manner by providing access to higher-level vocabulary and concepts within a text structure that offers better support when compared with the dense language and structure of textbooks.
Children's literature has also been found to be an effective gateway to scientific inquiry in classrooms (McLean et al., 2015), allowing for hands-on learning. Furthermore, Furner (2018) suggests that children's literature can be bibliotherapy, or a way to lower anxiety toward learning content material, by creating meaningful connections between stories and content. In sum, children's literature provides many lowstakes and motivating opportunities for students to learn and build upon knowledge in the content classroom.

Communication
Children's literature "is a major source of novel language forms" (Colston & Kuiper, 2002, p. 36), and it is a prime source for developing language and communication skills. Shared book reading has been shown to be particularly effective for developing language skills of ESL students in the United States (see Fitton et al., 2018, for a meta-analysis), but it has also been shown to be effective with EL1 students.
Through engaging with a variety of texts, students naturally develop various receptive and productive language skills. Many studies have shown that reading literature leads to vocabulary development (Wasik et al., 2016), a fundamental component of communicative ability. It has also been found that children's literature is a rich resource for metaphorical language which students may not encounter in everyday life (Colston & Kuiper, 2002). When teachers read to students and encourage them to make connections to literature, students' oral language abilities develop (Isbell et al., 2004;Kirkland & Patterson, 2005;Montag & MacDonald, 2015). Read-alouds can also serve as a model and help students develop reading prosody, which has been linked to reading fluency skills (Schwanenflugel et al., 2015). Overall, research has shown that students who have more exposure to text have better-developed communication skills and greater academic achievement (Mol & Bus, 2011).

Cognition
The development of cognition, particularly in the form of critical thinking skills, has shown to be enhanced by children's literature. It has been found that engaging with children's literature "provide [s] opportunities for readers to compare and contrast information, elicit questions, analyze evidence, and make predictions" (Newstreet et al., 2019, p. 567). Reading can open the door to a critical examination of social justice issues such as race and religion where students learn to think about issues from multiple perspectives and challenge their biases (Möller, 2012;Newstreet et al., 2019). Children's literature, in the form of picture books, can provide a unique environment for critical thinking in that students have opportunities not only to critically examine text but in many cases can also draw inferences from the accompanying artwork. This can be especially beneficial for ESL students with limited English literacy skills (Martínez-Roldán & Newcomer, 2011). When students draw their attention toward the aesthetic aspects of a book, there is often an increase in both comprehension and critical analysis (Pantaleo, 2017). Tunnell and Jacobs (2013) point out that characters from minority and foreign populations have become more prevalent in children's literature in recent decades. This increasingly inclusive nature of children's literature has allowed more students to see themselves through mirrors, peer through windows to view the lives of others, and even step through sliding glass doors to join new worlds and take on new perspectives (Bishop, 1990). The mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors student to join a global community and allow for cultural growth. The mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors "provide children and adults opportunities to address their fears and find connections to others in this world" (Möller, 2012, p. 33).

The current study
As illustrated above, the goals of CLIL as conceptualized through the 4Cs and the growth opportunities provided to students through children's literature seem to complement each other. However, our sys-

Method
To explore the use of children's literature in EFL classrooms, we utilized a systematic literature review process. In a systematic review, the goal is to "locate, appraise, and synthesize the best available evidence relating to a specific research question" (Boland et al., 2014, p. 3). Systematic literature reviews differ from general narrative literature reviews in that each step of the process is clearly defined in order to facilitate a comprehensive search and minimize bias (Campbell Collaboration, 2017). In the following sections, we will detail how our search was conducted, the process of screening and excluding articles, and how the studies were coded and analyzed.

Literature search
Four electronic databases were used to conduct our search: ERIC for education, PsychINFO for psychology, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) for linguistics, and Web of Science to broaden the search beyond these disciplines. For Web of Science, "All Databases" was selected, rather than the default "Web of Science Core Collection." Prior to the search, the thesauri of the various databases were consulted in order to identify and refine search terms. Two clusters of terms were used in the search. The first cluster included terms associated with "children's literature," and the second cluster included terms related to "English as a Foreign Language." The search terms used in each cluster are as follows, connected with the Boolean operator OR: Cluster 1: "child* literature" OR "child* book" OR "picture book*" OR "wordless book*" OR "read aloud" Cluster 2: "English as a second language" OR "English as a foreign language" OR ESL OR EFL OR "English language learner*" The asterisk following some of the above search terms allows for various forms of a word to be searched (e.g., child, child's, children, etc.). Each of these clusters was placed in separate fields in the respective databases and the parameters for the field were set to search abstracts. However, Web of Science does not have an abstract parameter, so "topic" was used instead. The two fields were connected by the Boolean operator AND. The search was conducted in July 2019.

Selection criteria and process
Prior to the search, criteria were set for the inclusion of articles in the systematic review. Articles were expected to meet the following criteria for inclusion: 1. The reporting of the study is in English.
2. The study is empirical and has been peer reviewed.
3. The focus of the study is on the use of children's literature. 4. The context of the study is in an EFL context where English is not the first language of the majority of the population. 5. The study participants are pre-kindergarten through grade 12 students (i.e., no university students or adults).
6. The study's setting is in a classroom (i.e., not home use of literature).
The first criterion for studies written in English, while admittedly a major limitation of this review, is to account for the linguistic limitations of the authors. Second, we decided to focus on empirical and peer-reviewed articles as a measure of quality control for the review, thus excluding edited collections and conference proceedings which may not have the same rigor of peer review as academic journals. The third and fourth criteria are in order to ensure that included studies matched with the research questions being explored. Next, we limited our study to students in pre-K through grade 12. Likewise, while there is interesting work that has been done on the use of children's literature in homes, the goal of this systematic review is to examine its use in the classroom, thus any study not in a classroom was excluded. Figure 1 illustrates the selection process. The first author conducted the search and screened the articles using the systematic literature review software Rayyan (Ouzzani et al., 2016). A search of the four databases returned 376 records. Duplicate records (n = 81) were identified and removed, leaving 295 records for screening. Of the 295, four were removed for reporting in a language other than English, 111 were removed for not being empirical and/or peer reviewed, 116 were not about children's literature, 35 were not in an EFL setting, 12 had a population outside of pre-K through grade 12, and four were not in a classroom setting. After this exclusion process, 13 records remained, and the full texts were retrieved. One record was requested through inter-library loan but was found to be irretrievable and, therefore, was excluded. With the 12 articles remaining, a forward search using Google Scholar and a backward search using the reference sections were conducted, and three additional articles were added for a total of 15 included articles.

Article coding and analysis
The 15 included articles were read, and notes were taken in a literature matrix created in Excel. The literature matrix contained various fields for author, year, title, publication name, one-sentence summary, theoretical framework, literature review, country, population, level of education, research type, research instruments, data analysis, results, discussion, and notes. Additionally, fields were created that corresponded to each of the 4Cs and an X was marked if the study touched on any of the dimensions, allowing for sorting and filtering by dimension. During the analysis process, the sorting and filtering features were used in order to be able to focus on specific dimensions and allow for connections between studies to be drawn. The literature matrix, along with any additional notes taken, was used in the synthesis of the studies that follow.

Results
An overview of the included articles can be found in Table 1. Below we will report the characteristics of the included articles in terms of year, country, education level, and research type.   Source: Own elaboration. Table 4 shows the distribution of articles by level of education. Elementary students were the most well-represented group in the included articles with seven studies. There were four studies with high school students, but all by the same author and the same students, and two studies with junior high school students. Somewhat unexpectedly, there were no studies on kindergarten classrooms, but there were two studies in pre-kindergarten classrooms.

Research type
Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods are all represented in the included articles (Table 5). The majority of studies (n = 8) utilized a qualitative methodology. Many of these studies used observations or analyzed audio or video recorded classes. Document analysis of journals or student work also was used in many of the studies, and a few incorporated interviews. Five studies utilized a mixed methods methodology that included either a questionnaire or a pretest/posttest in addition to the qualitative techniques above. Only two studies used exclusively quantitative methods with data collected through skillsbased tests.

Children's literature and the 4Cs
Having reported the general characteristics of the included studies, we will now discuss how research has shown children's literature in the EFL classroom as a way to develop the 4Cs: content, communication, cognition, and culture.

Content
Given that all of these studies were in traditional EFL contexts that were not implementing CLIL, content received little attention in the included articles. The most direct example of the teaching and learning of content is in Abdelhalim (2015) (Yeom, 2018). The books give students opportunities to be exposed to new vocabulary and expressions that they can later incorporate in their own language (Freire & Filho, 2015). With teacher facilitation, students can also develop language learning strategies that can be used to develop their language abilities beyond sessions with children's literature (Abdelhalim, 2015). In terms of vocabulary words, Birketveit and Rimmereide (2017) found that adverbials had better uptake than adjectives in their study, and Albaladejo Albaladejo et al. (2018) found that cognates had the best uptake in their study. Interestingly, Lin (2014) notes that the students studied showed growth on a picture vocabulary test but not on a first-language matching test, possibly suggesting that children's literature targets a specific type of vocabulary development.
Beyond vocabulary development, a few studies have addressed children's literature and its effect on EFL literacy. Al Darwish (2015) notes that, after repeated readings, students were able to read the shared stories on their own. The author also found that students began to incorporate language learned from shared reading to construct simple sentences. In terms of written discourse, Birketveit and Rimmereide (2017) found that students exposed to children's literature produced longer texts that were better developed in terms of story elements.

Cognition
Engaging with children's literature is often used to develop students beyond content and communication in order to develop higher cognitive skills (Al Darwish, 2015;Hayik, 2011Hayik, , 2015aHayik, , 2015bHayik, , 2016Lee, 2016;Yeom, 2018). Through children's literature, EFL students were found to expand their thinking by going beyond surface-level comprehension to connecting stories to their lives and experiences (Al Darwish, 2015). Yeom's (2018) study showed that students reflected on pictures within the text, showing evidence of comprehension beyond that of words alone. The author observed students growing from "casual viewers to reflective interpreters" through children's literature (Yeom, 2018, p. 42).
Both Hayik's (2011Hayik's ( , 2015aHayik's ( , 2015bHayik's ( , 2016 and Lee's (2016) studies show that, through children's literature, students have the opportunity to learn to challenge their biases and take on the perspectives of others.

Culture
In an ever-connected world, it is critical to be exposed to and understand the many different ways people live. As we move from a modern to a postmodern conception of diversity (Slattery, 2012), children's literature can invite students to consider the lives of those who are different from them. The work of Hayik (2011Hayik ( , 2015aHayik ( , 2015bHayik ( , 2016 showcases how children's literature can teach students about other cultures and challenge students to critique their own. Her studies focus on the use of children's literature with high school students in Israel who come from the minority Christian and Muslim populations. In this particular area, there is a lot of conflict between the two minority religious groups, as well as with the majority. Using books that address religious diversity (Hayik, 2015a) and books on group conflict (Hayik, 2011), the author challenges the students to consider their own religious culture, the religious culture of their counterparts, and the consequences of conflicts between the groups. These experiences with children's literature allowed students to challenge the status quo UNIVERSIDAD DE LA SABANA DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES in ways they had not done previously and encouraged them to actively promote social justice reform in their community.
Beyond religion, children's literature in the EFL classroom has also been used to address race (Freire & Filho, 2015) and gender issues (Freire & Filho, 2015;Hayik, 2015bHayik, , 2016. Freire and Filho (2015) observed that children's literature gave students opportunities to reflect on issues of race and sexual orientation and uninhibitedly respond and take stances on these issues in ways they may not have previously felt comfortable to in a classroom. Children's literature allowed students in Hayik (2015bHayik ( , 2016 the opportunity to explore the way females were portrayed in fairy tales, challenge those portrayals, and even take action by writing to the author of a book to express concern about gender positioning. However, like all of the other dimensions, Hayik (2016) notes that not all students were affected the same way during these social justice units. While some students took action to try to push forward social justice issues, the impact on others was minimal. As Lee (2016) notes, for students to benefit from experiences with children's literature, they have to take on a "transforming" identity where the student is open to making connections to their personal lives and then applying these connections to other contexts. Students who take on an identity of "appropriating," where tasks are done to please the teacher, or "resisting," where the student rejects opportunities to make connections, may not be able to develop the same cultural understanding through children's literature.

Discussion
This systematic literature review examined research on children's literature in the EFL classroom in relation to the 4Cs-content, communication, cognition, and culture (Coyle et al., 2010 and a non-threatening way for students to connect content to their lives (Furner, 2018). However, the current literature in EFL contexts is lacking in various content areas such as math, science, and others.
Given the growing trend of teaching subjects through English in EFL contexts through CLIL and English Medium Instruction (EMI) (Dearden, 2015), we believe more research is needed in this area.
Of students' oral language abilities (Isbell et al., 2004;Kirkland & Patterson, 2005;Montag & MacDonald, 2015), this area seems underexplored in EFL contexts. Overall, it seems children's literature has the potential to provide gains in the communication domain for EFL students.
Many of the areas of cognition touched upon in research from English-dominant contexts, such as critically analyzing texts and pictures in order to draw connections and conclusions (Möller, 2012;Newstreet et al., 2019;Pantaleo, 2017), are also displayed in EFL contexts. Students were shown to be able to go beyond the text and make connections to their lives and the lives of others. However, cognition can encompass a host of reading skills such as predictions, inferencing, comparing and contrasting, among others (Newstreet et al., 2019 (Hodges et al., 2018;Möller, 2012). In the work of Hayik (2015a), children's literature provided a mirror to view and celebrate their own religion while at the same time a window to view and understand the religion of others around them. The students in Hayik (2011) were also provided a sliding glass door to enter a new future where the conflicts experienced daily in their community were resolved and a more peaceful life resumed.
The research in this area for EFL contexts is limited but powerful in a world that is ever more connected and diverse. While it is easy for EFL classrooms to become consumed with the learning of language, the culture side is one that should not be ignored.  (Lo, 2017), we believe that this investment will pay off in that children's literature could potentially address multiple curricular goals simultaneously, possibly remedying a key struggle of CLIL teachers (Cammarata, 2010).

Future research directions
The articles included in this systematic review suggest that interest in children's literature in EFL classrooms is a newer trend, perhaps following the field's gravitation away from traditional grammar-based Future research should also embrace a variety of research methodologies. Work using qualitative and mixed methodologies should be continued, and an increase in quantitative research methods should be undertaken. Quantitative work accounted for a small percentage of the studies, and the sample sizes were small, leaving questions about the power of the findings. All types of research methodologies have the potential to contribute to our knowledge base and should be continued.

Limitations
While this systematic review possibly shows a positive connection between the 4Cs and children's literature in EFL contexts, a few limitations should be considered when interpreting the results. As previously mentioned, one major limitation is the exclusion of articles not in English. It should be acknowledged that there may be many articles reporting on classroom practices in other languages that have not been reviewed. Second, though we made efforts to retrieve all peer-reviewed articles on the topic through the use of major databases that are inclusive of the bulk of literature, these databases are limited by the UNIVERSIDAD DE LA SABANA DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES journals they index. Non-indexed journals may also have articles that were not incorporated in this review. Finally, we acknowledge that by only including peer-reviewed articles, though a widely-used method of quality control, we may also have caused valuable data to be omitted that may be present in edited editions or conference proceedings.