ABSTRACT
The educational approach known under the acronym CLIL, short for content and language integrated learning, has become a strong curriculum development in Europe and the rest of the world, as well as a lodestone of research interest. As CLIL contexts have been shown to vary, a major focus of this chapter has been to discuss studies from divergent quarters of Europe, in which data were gathered to gain insight into learner performance and implications for pedagogy and didactics of CLIL practice in mainstream education. The review starts with explorations of how CLIL was initially defined as a primarily linguistic phenomenon, and moves on to discuss how research priorities have developed since its inception. The first part reflects on research studies of a quasi-experimental design on quantitative measures, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, comparing CLIL with non-CLIL cognitive learning outcomes regarding the target language and content knowledge. The paragraphs that follow witness a shift towards didactics, and discuss studies in which a more qualitative design was used to gain insights into issues of CLIL pedagogy, learner affect, and L2 identity. Finally, the conclusion sums up the main takeaways from the research that has been conducted, and closes with recent studies into the place of CLIL as a pedagogic phenomenon, with potential to develop subject competences in bilingual and plurilingual mainstream education.
