CLIL Curriculum Implementation in Higher Education: Constructing Processes of CLIL Teacher Identity

Abstract

This study responds to the curricular innovation trends in higher education (HE), which is gradually leaning toward content and language-integrated learning (CLIL) pedagogy. This study features CLIL curriculum implementation from the bottom-up perspective in HE institutions in the Japanese context by focusing on language lecturers’ transformation into CLIL practitioners within a university language center. The qualitative study contemplates lecturers’ ideological dispositions, attitudes, and concerns toward the transition to CLIL pedagogy along with the language center’s overarching external and internal contextual factors and teaching and learning practices as a workgroup. It applies the teaching and learning regimes theory (TLR) to synthesize enhancement implications for the institutions undergoing similar curricular reforms in the form of increasing ­lecturers’ ownership and feeling of belonging. The data collected through semi-structured ­interviews revealed congruence between the ideological underpinnings of the lecturers and the CLIL curricular objectives. TLR theory, which distinguishes the practices of the workgroup for comprehending the change mechanisms, is employed to emphasize the insufficiency of philosophical compatibility on the teachers’ subjective level and the criticality of pragmatic enhancement initiatives to increase salience and profitability as a mandatory condition for maintaining the sustainability of the innovation. This study appeals to department administrators, teachers’ educators, and future CLIL practitioners and contains valuable insights into the normalization of CLIL practices in multiple higher education contexts.