Browsing by Author "Kunttu, Tiina"

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a dual-focused teaching approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language. It has gained increasing popularity in the European educational systems, but it still in the process of establishing it position in the field of language teaching. CLIL teachers have a demanding occupation and the teachers need many kind of skills that are needed in order to teach language and content simultaneously. CLIL teachers face problems like the lack of teaching materials, in-service training and support and mentoring and inadequate resources for teaching. According to the previous research it would be vital to provide extra hours for planning, preparing materials and collaboration and quality in-service training for CLIL teachers. The aim of this study is to examine what kind of problems CLIL teachers have encountered, what kind of solutions they have come up with those problems and what kind of support they would need in their work. This is a qualitative research. The data was collected via a questionnaire and five interviews. 24 CLIL teachers from Greater Helsinki answered the questionnaire and five of them were also interviewed. The data was analysed with the help of previous research. The solutions were analysed using content analysis. The problems CLIL teachers encountered were a lack of teaching materials, inadequate teaching resources, in-service and pre-service training, a lack of support and mentoring, problems with language and teaching language, collaboration and practical teaching work. The teachers solved problems they had encountered with colloquial collaboration, different classroom routines, in-service training and professional literature. They also supported the students' language learning and maintained their own language skills, shared experiences with their colleagues, prepared teaching materials themselves and in collaboration and adapted their teaching methods when needed. Teachers said that they would need better teaching materials, more teaching resources, more time for collaboration and discussion with their colleagues, better tailored in-service training, networking with other CLIL teachers and peer support in order to solve the problems they encounter in their work better.