Trans-semiotic Agency in Content and Language Integrated Learning: Multimodal Composing of Lab-reports for Higher Education in Hong Kong

International scholars supporting global development of science education have been researching on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) with a focus on materiality and translanguaging. In Hong Kong, CLIL Science classrooms scaffolding places dual focus on both the additional “Language” and target “Content” for knowledge co-making among bi/trilingual teachers and students whose native languages are not the target language (i.e., English). This paper highlights the research gap in developing critical perspectives towards CLIL through activating translanguaging and trans-semiotizing agency in science tertiary education in Hong Kong. This paper brings attention to the ways spatial repertories may facilitate laboratory meaning co-making in Science tertiary education. Triangulated with teaching video observations, semi-structured individual interviews, focus group discussions and course materials review in two 13-week laboratory-guided Science literacy courses completed by over 200 Science majors in an EMI higher education institute in 2019-2022, this design-based research (DBR) elucidates both opportunities and challenges encountered in building up mutually inclusive use of teacher-to-student and student-to-student trans-modal scaffolding resources interculturally contextualized as spatial repertoires in laboratory-guided CLIL through a 3-year English-in-the-discipline workshops funded project promoting asset-based pedagogy, e.g., the Multimodalities-Entextualisation Cycle in an EMI higher education institute. Research findings and discussion illustrate how translanguaging and materiality flows may consolidate asset-based models in CLIL Science classrooms for higher education. More significantly, this paper projects a forward-looking perspective in co-developing trans-semiotic agency for CLIL, breaking through the limitations in viewing content and language as separate entities and linear-logocentric meaning-making agendas for Science education.

Keywords: Translanguaging, Trans-semiotic Agency, CLIL

CONTEXT AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The term CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) was first coined by David Marsh and his research project team in 1994. From Marsh’s perspective, CLIL is a methodology of teaching languages with dual objectives on form and content -- a “language pedagogy focusing on meaning which contrasts to those which focus on form” (Marsh, 2002, p. 49). In Hong Kong, the configuration of CLIL emerges in numerous English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as an Additional Language (EAL) contexts, motivating non-Anglophone teachers and students across academic disciplines and institutional levels to develop dual content-language awareness for CLIL. This creates key concerns over supporting Asian students’ development of both discipline-specific content knowledge and language proficiency for overcoming cognitively demanding and linguistically challenging tasks encountered in various curriculum registers and genres in EMI higher education. Meanwhile, it is difficult for content specialists with limited ‘language awareness’ and ‘trans-semiotic awareness’ to provide scaffolding academic English support to students alone when there are interwoven challenges observed in CLIL for Asian tertiary students to establish a balanced and dual focus on content learning and language development in their targeted academic disciplines. This study used the Multimodalities-Entextualisation Cycle (MEC) (Lin, 2016; 2020) (see Figure 1) as curriculum genres for supporting Science students in handling laboratory assessment tasks in two EMI content subjects (N = 200-220 per subject in-take enrolment) taught in a tertiary educational institute in Hong Kong. Through collaborating with two Science content subject teachers, the teacher-researcher introduced and developed adjunct workshop sessions to support CLIL of 2 voluntary class groups of 25 Science students per semester in 2019-2022.

Diagram

Description automatically generated
Figure 1: The Multimodalities-Entextualisation Cycle (MEC) (Lin, 2016; 2020)

AIMS AND MAIN RESEARCH QUESTION

This research design focuses on using the MEC as bridging pedagogies, leveraging multimodal orchestration in discipline-appropriate meaning-making flow mapped with current CLIL curriculum genres (Lin, 2016; 2020). It aims at reconceptualising the roles of multimodality (Kress & Leeuwen, 2020; Turner; 2020) in breaking through the monoglossic language ideologies that may potentially marginalise alternative heteroglossic Science literacy meaning-making resources, processes and experiences co-created among plurilingual, pluricultural teachers and students in Hong Kong. Most importantly, the iterative nature of the MEC suggests the expansion of multimodal orchestration inside and outside the EMI tertiary classrooms as an ongoing trajectorial meaning-making process/ flow without a particular endpoint. As co-designers of meaning-making resources, processes, and experiences, plurilingual, pluricultural teachers and students are guided through the MEC to expand spatial repertoires for science literacy effortfully and continuously. The aims lead to the following research question of this DBR: What kinds of multimodal discipline-specific meaning-making resources (leveraged through the MEC) may support integrating content and language for higher education in Hong Kong? To attempt the main research question, three stages of the MEC (see Figure 1) have been introduced to over 200 Science students taking two content subjects entitled as Organic Chemistry and Introduction to Laboratory Safety through their voluntary participation in some non-credit bearing adjunct workshops supporting plurilingual, pluricultural tertiary students (mainly using Cantonese, Mandarin and English as everyday linguistic repertoires) in the process of handling discipline-specific assessment tasks in EMI courses. Throughout the adjunct workshop trainings, the teacher-researcher and her students co-design meaning-making resources, processes, and experiences through three key stages of multimodal orchestration. The teacher-researcher has navigated the complexity in co-designing dynamic and fluid flow of discipline-appropriate meaning-making resources that may potentially support plurilingual, pluricultural tertiary students’ understanding of cognitive and linguistic conventions established in science. For example, Science students were guided to compose multimodal laboratory reports in the academic discipline of science subjects (e.g., Organic Chemistry), along with appropriate use of plurilingual semiotic resources that favourably deliver disciplinary knowledge and multimodal academic genres, i.e., laboratory reports written in English, complemented with visual graphics.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Finding 1: The MEC bridges plurilingual, pluricultural students’ multimodal literacies, especially the trans-semiotic awareness of utilizing spatial repertoires for handling genre-specific assessment tasks, i.e., laboratory reports multimodal composing for science subjects. To enrich Science students’ genre-based disciplinary learning experiences, multimodal teaching/ learning resources, such as pre-recorded laboratory demonstration videos reporting live Chemistry lab-based experiments in relation to science topics, were adopted in the adjunct workshop classroom discussion to support integrating content and language learning in higher education (refer to Data Extract 1 – laboratory demonstration videos). The still and moving images orchestrated through digital technologies and multimodalities created a rich experimental context for science tertiary students to connect their first-hand everyday life observations about multiple discipline-appropriate scenarios with the target content and language identified when they needed to academically analyse particular spatial repertories (e.g., the lab apparatuses) in a targeted academic genre/ register/ style.

Finding 2: The MEC encourages emotional labour for engaging plurilingual students in reading and note-taking activities through co-creating written/ spoken dialogic scaffolds in L1/ L2. Another key challenge encountered by science tertiary students in EMI higher education is the insufficient exposure to academic content/ knowledge/ language for disciplinary meaning-making and practice. Instead of spoon-feeding tertiary students with academic journal articles and book chapters highlighting key theoretical traditions of scientific inquiries and conventions in monolingual practice, such as English, the teacher-researcher experimented using various combinations of L1/ L2 every day and academic written/ spoken texts and multimodalities to flexibly leverage plurilingual students’ interest and communicative repertories in the target discussion/ analysis of science issues.

Finding 3: The MEC leverages students’ extextualising experiences in developing trans-semiotic agency with the aid of multimodality. Teacher-to-student dialogic scaffolds and student-to-student dialogic scaffolds were co-created through pre-assessment drills and meaning-making flows co-designed with the aid of multimodality, ranging from PowerPoint slides, note-cards, facial expressions, eye contact, physical and social interaction with spatial materiality for scientific inquiry. The MEC, thus, provided leveraging experiences in flexibly decontextualise and recontextualise the target content and language skills iteratively through the pre-assessment, assessment and post-assessment meaning-making flow and process. Such first-hand individual and group leveraging experiences connected to discipline-appropriate multimodal orchestration may open a new pathway for plurilingual, pluricultural teachers and students in EMI higher education to see how translanguaging and trans-semiotizing may empower themselves in the multimodal meaning-making process/ flow. The multimodal leveraging resources co-designed through the MEC also disrupts the ways monolingualism and logocentrism have been negatively influencing plurilingual, pluricultural teachers and students in Hong Kong when they do not see their first language/ mother language and other cross-modality communicative repertoires as inferior to the target language presented in academic genre/ register/ style when handling assessment tasks mapped with discipline-specific spatial repertoires orchestration, such as the use of materiality and space for laboratory-guided scientific inquiry.

REFERENCES

​​Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2020). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge.

​Lin, A. M. Y. (2016). Language across the curriculum and CLIL in English as an Additional Language (EAL) context: Theory and practice. Springer.

​Lin, A. M. Y. (2020). From deficit-based teaching to asset-based teaching in higher education in BANA countries: cutting through ‘either-or’ binaries with a heteroglossic plurilingual lens. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 33(2), 203-212. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2020.1723927

​Marsh, D. (2002). Content and Language Integrated Learning: The European Dimension-Actions, Trends and Foresight Potential. Retrieved from: http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/languages/index.html

​ Turner, M., 2020, The Routledge Handbook of Language Education Curriculum Design.

​ Mickan, P. & Wallace, I. (eds.). 1st ed. Routledge, p. 90-10​