Teacher language awareness in CLIL teacher education in Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador: a multiple case study

This multiple case study-based investigation examined teacher language awareness (TLA) for content and language integrated learning (CLIL).This study was carried out in three teacher education programmes in Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador during two consecutive academic years (2019)(2020)(2020)(2021), and it sought to explore teacher educators' (n = 5) and student-teachers' (n = 58) understanding and practice of (teacher) language awareness for CLIL settings.Data were collected through interviews, online forums, teaching resources (e.g., slides, lesson plans, assignments) and classroom observations (online and face-to-face), and analysed following an interpretivist and inductive approach.Findings show that the participants approached TLA as explicit knowledge about language, and associated it to notions of basic interpersonal skills, general academic language, and subject-specific terminology when TLA was embedded in CLIL.Based on Morton's (2018) construct of language knowledge for content learning, the paper puts forward a data-driven model of teacher language awareness for CLIL teacher education.pre-service teacher education programmes in three South American nations (Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador) using a multi-layered set of data collection methods to explore the teaching perceptions and practices of five teacher educators and 58 student-teachers (i.e., pre-service teachers).The findings showed the importance of educating prospective teachers on CLIL's components to improve bilingual education endeavours.Participants demonstrated various experiences and understandings regarding teacher language awareness despite the repeated tendency to emphasise explicit (language) knowledge as a core element to develop generic and specialised registers.Our study highlights a fourcomponent framework: (i) exploration, (ii) inductive input, (iii) reflection, and (iv) informed use regarding TLA for CLIL teacher education.The findings of this study suggest the pivotal relevance of educating the next generations of teachers in the integration of language and content in any of its forms, given the high probability that teachers may work in CLIL contexts in the future.