This study explores the impact of two Service-Learning (SL) projects on student teachers’ preparation and
perceptions in relation to literacy teaching in English as a foreign language within CLIL programmes. The projects offered
hands-on training in preparing and delivering lessons applying Rose and Martin’s (2012)
Reading to Learn (R2L) approach to support children at two Madrid primary schools implementing CLIL with high proportions of
at-risk pupils and socioculturally diverse student bodies. One hundred and thirteen undergraduate student teachers specialising in
English as a Foreign Language at the Complutense University School of Education participated in the SL projects. The projects’
goals included developing the students’ civic engagement and disposition to gain understanding of the potential of a systematic,
evidence-based approach to literacy pedagogy for guiding all pupils to acquire the reading and writing abilities needed for
educational success. Data from questionnaires, focus group interviews, and reflective journals were collected and analysed.
Student teachers faced the challenges of apprehending and effectively applying the R2L strategies in classrooms characterised by
pupils’ widely ranging levels of preparation for reading and writing in English. Their reflections show evolution towards
readiness and awareness of the possibilities of adopting proactive measures, such as systematic literacy instruction, in order to
ensure the progress of pupils as they face the challenges of CLIL in the context of socioeconomic and educational inequity within
classrooms and across schools.
Over the past decades, strategies to enable education to form part of the solutions to socio-economic, demographic,
environmental and technological challenges of the continent set up by the Council of Europe have led to the development, evolution and
spread of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) (Lorenzo, 2007; European Commission, 2012). CLIL is now firmly established in a high proportion of schools
across Spain, the context of the present study, where the results of these strategies are now becoming evident. Based on the original
motivations for creating and promoting this approach, CLIL is intended to be inclusive, contributing to overcoming inequities in
education by providing greater access to “languages for all”, that is, to pupils from all kinds of backgrounds, regardless of their
socio-economic situations or educational needs (Marsh, 2012, ch. 6).
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