ABSTRACT
Austria. Decisions on foreign language pedagogy at a national level, such as the
adoption of CLIL in Austrian mainstream schooling, form a core aspect of language
policy (LP), and there are a number of explicit language management statements on
both national and EU levels on the use of CLIL. It would, however, be simplistic to
view the perceived success of CLIL language practices in Austria as a direct result of
these LP statements. As argued by Spolsky (2004), LP documents stand in a complex
relationship with both language practice and, importantly, with language beliefs.
Over the last few decades, research into teachers’ beliefs has shown effects on
classroom practices (cf., e.g. Borg 2003), on individuals’ development as profes-
sionals (cf., e.g. Johnson 1994) and also on their adoption and acceptance of new
teaching approaches (cf., e.g. Donaghue 2003). Despite a wealth of research
conducted into learner beliefs and into teacher cognition, these have to our knowledge so far not been related explicitly to one specific educational approach in its trial phase. Here we shall discuss the construction of beliefs on CLIL by the
stakeholders involved in relationship with relevant language practices and language
management (cf. Spolsky 2004). We shall argue that especially the construction of
this approach as ‘successful’, as well as the conceptualisation of learning by most
stakeholders, relies heavily on beliefs and in the absence of CLIL management
generally favours an unstructured adoption of CLIL. However, we shall also be
pointing out contradictory trends as well as distinctions of opinion within the groups
of stakeholders interviewed.
