The CLIL unit as an Emotional Educational Approach. An Intervention proposal for Science Subject (Primary 4)

Abstract

In this master’s dissertation we study the main characteristics of CLIL, not only as a good approach to teach content through a foreign language in an integrated way, but also as a respectful and holistic way to enhance global citizenship spirit and provide the appropriate tools to function effectively in today’s World. We also review some literature to find out what Emotional Education is, the importance to introduce it in the mainstream education implicitly, and the relevance of teacher’s training to participate in this matter. Then, we research slightly about some forms of Emotional Education implementation with some examples and two real cases: United Kingdom and Canarias (Spain). And finally, we found evidences about the positive influence that affect has in foreign language acquisition. According to the findings in the theoretical framework, the implementation of Emotional Education schools supposes, not only the enhancement of emotions in order to improve students’ wellbeing and learning, but also, and more importantly, a crucial tool to construct citizenship identity among them. In order to link both fields, we finish this study with the design of an intervention proposal based on the development of a CLIL unit for Primary 4, about plants. For this object, we integrate the main aspects of CLIL approach from the 4Cs point of view (content, cognition, communication and culture) applying some aspects of Emotional Education. In order to evaluate the proposal we incorporate a rubric to assess both, the student’s outcomes and the teacher work. As we could not implement the intervention in a real context, we are not able to measure its effectiveness. Nevertheless, our belief is that we have taken a step forward by doing this attempt of integrating emotions with CLIL