Addressing social equity by making explicit the implicit value systems within content and language learning: A pedagogical framework for culture within CLIL

Russell Cross
The University of Melbourne
Abstract

Despite efforts to redress the problem of social inequity within education, data reveals the student attainment gap continues to widen on the basis of socioeconomic background, particularly within Anglophone contexts (OECD, 2019; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of ‘cultural capital’ has been one especially powerful concept for understanding the causes of such inequity as it relates to social class, and how entrenched patterns of privilege within institutions, such as schools, value certain forms of cultural capital – and associated ways of knowing, being, and doing – over others. Much of the existing CLIL research on social (in)equity has tended to examine either the impact of programmatic conditions on dis/advantage (e.g., streaming, access; see also Evniskaya & Llinares, this issue), or the role of language for enabling more inclusive instructional practices (e.g., differentiation, scaffolding). Both lines of inquiry have produced valuable insights on how CLIL can contribute to more equitable outcomes, but this paper aims to offer a third line, focusing on how greater equity can be achieved through the conceptualization of culture within CLIL contexts. Informed by Bourdieu’s concept of ‘cultural capital’ which has helped advance class-based understandings of inequity, the paper develops a pedagogic framework that explicitly accounts for culture when there is a simultaneous focus on both language and content, drawing on examples from instructional practice.

Keywords:
Publication history

Date received: 10 October 2022

Date accepted: 17 February 2023

Published online: 30 June 2023

Table of contents

The impetus for this paper was a broader concern and longer-term agenda (Bower et al., 2020) that content and language integrated learning (CLIL) evolves in ways conducive to enhancing social equity. A long-standing problem within education has been the attainment gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged – especially, but not limited to, dis/advantage based on class – and this gap continues to widen (OECD, 2019; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Further, as I discuss later (and also in the Editorial of this Special Issue (Llinares & Cross)), CLIL and other forms of bilingual education have been heavily critiqued for contributing to this problem, rather than helping redress it. One development that has helped understand why inequity persists, particularly in relation to class, is Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of ‘cultural capital’: forms of accumulated knowledge and ‘ways of being’ valued by dominant social groups and their institutions, such as education systems, that contributes to persistent, long-term patterns of generational disadvantage among marginalised social groups.

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