I feel honoured to write this Afterword – partly having read the extraordinary papers in this issue which demonstrate how principles of equity are being unravelled, questioned, and realised in CLIL and bilingual classrooms across very different contexts. Secondly, it provides a space to reclaim one fundamental tenet: CLIL positioned within broader education contexts is appropriate for all learners regardless of age, stage, and competences. This has been a driver for the constant research and work with learners and teachers I have undertaken throughout the last four decades. The Afterword, therefore, is a collection of thoughts which drive the quest to make plurilingual learning accessible and meaningful for everyone.

It is unthinkable to believe that education is a privilege and only appropriate for certain learners in contemporary societies. Fundamental values have shifted significantly on a global scale concerning the rights of all children to be educated without discrimination regardless of ethnicity, sex, religion, language, abilities, or any other status, reflected in the UN Convention (2022) and Millennium Development Goals (2000)United Nations Summit (2000) New on Millennium Development Goals. Retrieved on 22 February 2023 from https://​www​.un​.org​/millenniumgoals/. If we conceptualise bilingual education – especially CLIL – as an approach to learning amongst several for educating children anywhere, then it is also unthinkable that CLIL is only appropriate for children from certain types of backgrounds, with specific linguistic repertoires, capacities, and demonstrable motivation to learn. Adopting what some might refer to as an ideological stance, however, immediately raises questions under the banner of ‘education for all’. Long-standing arguments reject trying to create the same experiences for everyone as a means to promoting principles of equity and inclusion, instead turning towards unpicking diversity and differentiated conditions for educational provision. I would argue that this discourse is very much teaching-oriented rooted in legacies of what ‘good’ teaching means. Instead, a shift to genuine learning-centredness involves constantly addressing ‘wicked’ philosophical, theoretical, humanist challenges about (bilingual) education per se in order to better understand the development, growth, and design of fit-for-purpose practices for our young people in contemporary society. After all, diversity is not a pedagogic inconvenience but a human condition.

In 2022, UNICEF held a world summit on Transforming Education calling upon governments globally to commit to every child having the right to quality education. Of course, constructs such as quality education, equity, inclusion, and diversity are all open to wide interpretation bounded by socio-political, economic and cultural factors. Indeed, we are all impacted by global crises – conflicts, threats, injustices, and pandemics – leading to the need for radical and critical changes to educational priorities. A focus on equity, for example, has been emphasised by significant movements for raising awareness of and rethinking decolonisation, racism, inclusion, and sustainability – now familiar across different sectors of formal education. And yet, UN Secretary-General Guterres warns that contemporary inequalities in education access and quality worldwide are rapidly becoming the ‘great divider’ and, in developed countries, ‘education systems often entrench rather than reduce inequality, reproducing it across generations’ (Guterres, 2022Guterres, A. (September 2022) The UN Secretary General’s Opening Speech at the UNICEF world summit Transforming Education . Retrieved on 22 February 2023 from https://​www​.un​.org​/en​/transforming​-education​-summit). He goes on to say that too often ‘curricula are outdated and narrow, education systems take little account of lifelong learning, and teachers are under-trained, under-valued and under-paid’ (Guterres, 2022Guterres, A. (September 2022) The UN Secretary General’s Opening Speech at the UNICEF world summit Transforming Education . Retrieved on 22 February 2023 from https://​www​.un​.org​/en​/transforming​-education​-summit).

The conundrum is complex and will always be so. However, an increasing gap is emerging between the values that underpin educators’ work, the call for equity and inclusion for learners, and the normative assumptions played out by educational systems – what I refer to as a ‘Bell Curve mentality’ that seeks to prioritise measurements of ‘successful’ learning. The immeasurable – i.e., enabling all learners to feel valued as individuals and understand how to live fulfilling lives – is often positioned within moves to promote the ‘health and wellbeing’ of learners. Yet this often fails to transparently inform and transform curriculum learning design. Moreover, the power dynamics of political and social demands are leading to increasing pressure on educators to deal with macro global issues by translating them into micro classroom practices. This requires sensitivity and shared understanding – yet without the support needed to make the critical shift towards exploring learning spaces as dynamic ecological entities where learning is about growth mindsets so that all learners can be and become. In other words, fractured thinking does not embrace the possibilities offered by more shared, holistic, phenomenological notions of how (pluri)learning and being happens in different classes with different learners and different teachers – a consequence reinforced by Elisa Hidalgo-McCabe in this issue.

Thus far, these points may seem to be abstract, philosophical, and far removed from the realities and practicalities of school learning in general and bilingual or CLIL classrooms in particular. I would argue, however, that they lie at the very core of a shift from pedagogies of integration to pedagogies of inclusion – in my view it is not possible to separate the two. Indeed, the challenges of inclusivity and equity facing CLIL teachers are no less and no greater than those involved in any other approach to learning – and will continue to be so given the fluidity and dynamic of societal and environmental change. Well-documented and extensive research in CLIL has focussed on ways of integrating subject matter content and linguistic progression – leading to demands on teachers faced with integrating the ‘knowns’ and ‘unknowns’ of their own professional worlds across traditionally separated curriculum areas. More recent CLIL research has shifted towards learning-centredness, focussing on issues embedded in the accessibility and nature of bilingual learning in changing multilingual, multicultural landscapes.

We know that classrooms may be quite messy, a hodgepodge of actors’ beliefs, demands and histories; multiple transactions; different meanings; and the contingencies of everyday life. In practice, the distinction between curriculum questions (what) and questions of pedagogy (how) is difficult to make visible.(Vernon, 2020Vernon, E. (2020) Teaching to the epistemic Self: Ascending and descending the ladder of knowledge. The Curriculum Journal, 31 (1), 27–47. )

Moreover, global events demanding present-future rather the present-past thinking have opened up alternative pathways for exploring the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of CLIL from a values-driven, practice-oriented perspective. Inspired by Tauritz (2016)Tauritz, R. (2016) A pedagogy for uncertain times. In W. Lambrechts & J. Hindson (eds), Research and innovation in education for sustainable development. Exploring collaborative networks, critical characteristics and evaluation practices. Environment and School Initiatives – ENSI. Retrieved on 22 February 2023 from https://​rltauritz​.files​.wordpress​.com​/2019​/02​/tauritz​-2016​-a​-pedagogy​-for​-uncertain​-times​.pdf and her pedagogies of uncertainty which hold that as teachers we have to cherish, tolerate, and use uncertainty as a catalyst for creative action and lateral thinking – I propose that CLIL is at a turning point in pioneering, critiquing, and nurturing equitable and inclusive learnscapes. Here, I suggest three provocations as a trigger for exploring ideas and promoting professional discussion and critique which seek to empower both educators and learners to engage fully with uncertain futures. These ideas interweave evidence and examples provided in different articles in this volume.

First, exploring what might be termed epistemic fluency prioritises learners’ capacity and confidence in their own ability to investigate phenomena and engage in knowledge-building as enquiry and social practice within and across disciplines. From this perspective, a subject discipline is both a co-constructed knowledge (and skills) base and a medium for interpreting the world through a particular lens – the implications of which are reflected in the paper by Russell Cross. If we see language (s) also as both a medium for learning and a means to interpret the world underpinned by social and cultural situatedness that goes beyond the language system itself, then integrated learning lies at the intersection of multiple disciplines and languages. Examples of a curriculum learning orientation, such as in Finland, prioritise enabling learners – regardless of ‘abilities – to develop the means to investigate phenomena from different perspectives.

The purpose of education is to promote life-long and broad learning leading to holistic development and well-being of all learners as well as to improve their skills for living in a sustainable way. Phenomenon-based learning is a multidisciplinary, constructivist form of learning or pedagogy where students study a topic or concept using a holistic approach.(Council for Creative Education, FinlandCouncil for Creative Education, Finland https://​www​.ccefinland​.org​/product​-page​/phenomenon​-based​-learning)

Drawing on and valuing multiple perspectives in plurilingual learning spaces seeks to nurture individuals, broaden and deepen understanding, and promote learner agency through collaborative problem-creating and problem-solving – see the study by Natalia Evnitskaya and Ana Llinares in this issue. This positioning encourages us as educators to look at alternative conceptualisations of curriculum where sense-making within and beyond disciplines encourages transferability and transdisciplinary thinking. CLIL is well placed to experiment further how pluricultural sensitivities and plurilingual interpretations embedded in subject specific ways of seeing the world can lead to more holistic learning opportunities that go beyond pre-determined knowledge bases and linguistic systems constructed in a linear fashion. The emphasis is on growth mindsets where our learners discover alternative ways of seeing themselves as critical knowledge creators and owners rather than recipients.

Digging deeper into learning design leads to the second provocation. Transdisciplinary ways of learning require some understanding of the ways different disciplines interpret the world. Defining CLIL as equitable suggests a radical change to (plurilingual) learning spaces, if we are to offer accessible and relevant learner-owned subject knowledge bases (and skills) across languages. Whilst acknowledging the ongoing challenges of combining and integrating content and language learning, I suggest there is an increasingly urgent need to experiment alternative approaches. If we take the idea of developing textual fluency as opening the pathway for promoting plurilingual accessibility to subject knowledge and skills for different learners, then unravelling the role of text (taken here as a collective noun) is fundamental. Recent research rooted increasingly in practice-oriented studies explores the ‘literacies’ turn (Morton, 2020Morton, T. (2020) Cognitive discourse functions: A bridge between content, literacy and language for teaching and assessment in CLIL. CLIL Journal of Innovation and Research in Plurilingual and Pluricultural Education, 3 (1), 7–17. ; Gibbons, 2009Gibbons, P. (2009) English academic literacy and thinking. Heineman.) and pluriliteracies approaches (Coyle, Meyer, & Straschen-Dielmann, 2023Coyle, D., Meyer, O., & Straschen-Dielmann, S. (2023) A deeper learning companion for CLIL: Putting pluriliteracies into practice. Cambridge University Press. ). Multimodal texts as a starting point offer teachers and learners multilevel accessible ways of critically interpreting and seeing the world – previously referred to as ‘epistemic’ understanding. Aoife Ahern and Katherine Smith provide insightful examples of putting this into practice. Note also that this involves a significant shift from the traditional role of the written text in language classes followed by comprehension questions.

Developing textual fluency foregrounds a (pluri)literacies approach to deconstructing, reconstructing, and analysing different types of text – blogs, messages, films, stories, histories, and so on – from multiple perspectives which connect with the lives of diverse learners. Different types of text, at different linguistic levels, with a range of meanings based on issues of importance ranging from the global to the local, from the community to the individual, invite learners to work across languages to construct their own deeper understanding. Raising awareness of different discourses, how they work, how they are constructed and deconstructed, and used invites learners using differentiated learning-centred ways to access meaning and engage in deeper learning. In other words, prioritising meaning-making and the skills required to actively engage learners in critical thinking using different types of text requires rethinking some of the principles and practices of learning design. Working towards textual fluency seeks to openly increase content relevance, encourage (trans)languaging to promote deeper learning, develop critical cultural consciousness, and grow learner agency. The crucial space lies in open discussions with learners that clarify which text and why in order to (de)construct meaning that promotes ownership and belonging, equity, and diversity – underpinned by a drive to stimulate curiosity.

The final provocation focusses on linguistic fluency. Traditionally interpreted as the capacity to speak efficiently often without errors, I would argue that in our contemporary world effective communication is both multimodal and plurilingual. In other words, enabling our learners to communicate meaningfully using languages as resources to language and communicate meaning, brings into question the role of the language(s) in the CLIL classroom – refer to the study by Jenny Denman, Erik van Schooten, and Rick de Graaff. There has been contentious debate about the nature of translanguaging both in monolingual settings and in multilingual classrooms, where some languages used are not shared. However, in CLIL classrooms where the content knowledge and skills base use language(s) as both the medium and interconnected knowledge base, then there is not only a need to redefine linguistic fluency as going beyond speaking but essentially to examine equitable pathways for communicating learning in alternative multimodal ways in our post-digital world. This does not mean that instruction in how languages work is irrelevant – quite the reverse. However, it does raise uncomfortable discussions about not only which languages are valued, encouraged, and progressed but which discursive practices are transparently developed for CLIL to be truly inclusive for both teachers and learners – developed further by Dario Banegas in this issue. Concepts such as ‘language-orientation’, ‘language-as-resource’, and ‘academic language’ all need to be analysed in terms of the roles of language(s) in the bilingual classroom, and ways in which these impact on building an inclusive environment.

The provocations in this Afterword reflect the strands running through this volume that look to the present-future. They are intended to promote debate, discussion, and critique about CLIL and its potential for providing an equitable and inclusive learning experience for learners and teachers. Working towards enabling all our learners to develop critical understanding of how to interpret their world from different perspectives requires a rethink into the nature of accessible resources embedded in subject disciplines and their literacies, alongside discursive strategies to operationalise and deepen thinking. We know that the challenges involved in encouraging all learners to develop growth mindsets regardless of individual differences, capacities, and attributes in CLIL classrooms are never-ending (see the article by Adrián Granados and Francisco Lorenzo in this issue). Yet here is a plea. Let’s all slow down and take the valuable time out we deserve from our ‘busyness’ to look at what matters and what we want to achieve with our learners in our own classrooms regardless of systems, regimes, and pressures. As educators and researchers, the provocations might provide a trigger for exploring our own fundamental beliefs about the purpose, the relevance and the rights of all children, and their education – which of course does not suggest that every learner’s CLIL experiences will follow the same pathway. However, collectively we need to find more ways of supporting each other in experimenting what can be described as ‘learning ecologies’ inside classrooms regardless of learners’ age and abilities – making the impossible possible. In sum, the learning spaces we design and grow with our students to create adaptive and alternative pedagogies make visible our values, transformative resources, and ways of investigating and communicating learning with others. This is where CLIL educators and learners can pioneer transformative and inclusive pedagogies which will contribute significantly to making multilingual education the ‘norm’.