Affiliation:
1. The University of Melbourne
Abstract
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.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics