The challenges of integrating linguistic and disciplinary knowledge in public secondary schools in the province of Córdoba, Argentina

Global CLIL: Critical, Ethnographic and Language Policy Perspectives

Routledge

Año: 2022; p. 96 - 121

AbstractEducational proposals that seek to integrate content and foreign language teaching are gaining ground in public agendas as an alternative to traditional language classes. In Argentina, these ways of teaching foreign languages were until recently circumscribed to private schools in general, and in particular, elite schools, and were mostly associated with obtaining international certifications. The changes in language policies born out of the National Education Act of 2006 brought content and language integration proposals to public schools within the framework of a curricular revamp opting for interdisciplinary work in schools. In this chapter, we intend to address the meanings that the integration of content and foreign language acquire in a public secondary school in the province of Córdoba from an ethnographic perspective. For this purpose, we will take into account different data to analyse the curricular, institutional and interactional dimensions of the meanings of ?integration?. The results show that these meanings are constructed in relation to the curricular optionality of this proposal in public school settings, which results in hierarchies between content types, as well as in negotiations between language and content teachers indicating that the meaning of integration is not always shared.