Professional Vulnerability in Adopting a CLIL Pedagogy at a Neoliberal Restructured University in Kazakhstan

3.1 Research Context and the Focal Participant

As noted, our study was part of a larger workshop project named Project SCILLA, which the American Council funded as part of its Central Asia University Partnerships Program in 2019. This project was carried out from the summer to the winter of 2020 (see De Costa, Hartman, Green-Eneix, & Montgomery, this issue). Project SCILLA aimed to provide CLIL training to a consortium of 10 universities in rural Kazakhstan. The Project SCILLA group reached out to rural universities in Kazakhstan and asked if they would publicize the professional development opportunity at their university. The professional development series of workshops, which entailed attending synchronous lectures over Zoom (https://zoom.us), covered the differences between CLIL and EMI, the introduction of CLIL principles, and strategies and resources the teachers could use in their lessons. As stated, CLIL is a mixture of content- and language-oriented learning outcomes that aim to assist students in acquiring the target language, specifically English, while using it to teach the content (Airey, 2016).

Ball et al. (2015) highlighted the following seven guiding principles to support language development while teaching content:

• 1) “Mediat[ing]” language between the learner and new knowledge

• 2) Develop[ing] subject language awareness

• 3) Plan[ning] with language in mind

• 4) Carry[ing] out a curriculum language audit

• 5) Mak[ing] general academic language explicit

• 6) Creat[ing] initial talk time

• 7) Sequenc[ing] activities from “private” through to “public” (p. 71)

Project SCILLA used these seven principles to guide our teacher participants on how to develop CLIL lessons. Moreover, we emphasized, like Ball et al. (2015), that lessons be designed around three dimensions which are conceptual, procedural, and linguistic, as a way to allow teachers the flexibility and agency to “make decisions in their classrooms about which dimension they wish to prioritize at any given point” (p. 38). The principles and dimensions of CLIL were taught during the large lectures (involving all participants in the project), while the small workshops (where participants were grouped according to their university) provided time for participants to interact with the workshop leader and assistants. This allowed teachers to ask questions about CLIL and reflect on how to integrate this information into their teaching.

For teachers to participate in the CLIL workshops, they had to apply for the limited spots available. The application included filling out a survey and submitting a video explaining why they wanted to be part of this project and how it would support their pedagogical knowledge in their department. As a result, we were able to recruit 30 teacher participants for this project, with each participant receiving a certificate that counted towards their required professional development at the end of the project. From the 30 participants, we selected Lin as our focal participant for this study because she was eager to adopt a CLIL approach in her mechanical engineering course and had expressed a range of emotions when attempting to incorporate CLIL into her pedagogical repertoire throughout the SCILLA project. She obtained her doctorate in Mechanical Engineering in 2017 and is currently an associate professor in the School of Engineering at Hawk State University (HSU, a pseudonym). HSU is a technical university with Kazakh and Russian as the primary modes of instruction. English has only recently been implemented in a few subjects at Lin’s institution, with her subject area, mechanical engineering, being one of them. Lin spoke three languages at varying levels based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001): Russian (Mastery, C2), Kazakh (Elementary, A2), and English (Expert, C1), with Russian being the primary mode of instruction until recently.

3.2 Researcher Positionality

During the study, the first author, Curtis, was a white doctoral candidate who was born and raised in the United States. He assumed the role of a qualitative researcher who was trying to learn more about Lin and her experiences as she was learning to incorporate CLIL into her teaching repertoire. Peter, one of the faculty team leaders of Project SCILLA, assumed the role of a workshop facilitator. Specifically, he was Lin’s group facilitator throughout the small group meetings that occurred from May to December 2020, with Curtis assisting the former in the workshop facilitation process. Outside of formal workshop communication, both authors served as a resource to support Lin and other Project SCILLA participants by sharing their experiences related to language teaching and answering CLIL-related questions.

3.3 Data Examined and Analysis Procedure

Because this study focuses on Lin’s experiences learning about CLIL as a pedagogical approach, we used content analysis to analyze the collected data. Specifically, we analyzed her survey response, post-workshop interview, lesson materials made and carried out as part of Project SCILLA, and the field notes collected during the small group sessions and observations of Lin’s class. Content analysis was used in both a concept- and data-driven way (Schreier, 2014). We analyzed the data by developing initial categories that stemmed from concepts that aligned with our poststructuralist-discursive approach (described earlier) to emotions and professional vulnerability. Our emotion labor concept-driven analysis saw us developing two broad initial categories of expected emotions, namely, (1) what teachers tried to feel and considered legitimate in their respective teaching context as well as their experienced emotions, and (2) what teachers actually felt (Zembylas, 2002). We also used vulnerability as an initial heuristic category before fully engaging with the data. Once the initial categories were made, we developed data-driven sub-categories.

The second stage of our analysis process entailed engaging in in-vivo coding and initial coding that was relevant to our research questions. In-vivo coding encompassed identifying a word or phrase Lin said in the interview in order to further represent her voice in the findings section of the study. Some examples of in-vivo coding include the following codes we developed, such as “an essential part of my career” and “wondering how it’s hard for students.” In-vivo coding was coupled with initial coding, where we generated codes that could lead to possible areas of interest in relation to our research questions. Both forms (i.e., in-vivo and initial) of coding allowed us to understand Lin’s emotional experiences as she participated in Project SCILLA. Once the coding processes were completed, we grouped the created codes and developed sub-categories. This was accomplished by drafting our initial impressions and revisiting our research questions. After this, we moved into the final listening and coding session where we coded the rest of the data using the sub-categories (e.g., trying something new, CLIL means English, pressure to improve mistakes, and hitting a barrier) developed while also being open to new codes (e.g., stress using technology). Once the last coding session was completed, we collaboratively refined the codes through active discussion, resulting in developing a central theme (e.g., causes of professional vulnerability in a transforming institution) and sub-themes (e.g., willingness for pedagogical change, institutional pressures to change, and shifting pedagogical demands to a new teaching modality).

4.1 Turning Top-Down Demand to Embracing Pedagogical Vulnerability

We found through our analysis that the top-down government pressures of the trilingual national policy (MoES, 2015), the reform and restructuring of her institution, and the COVID-19 pandemic affected Lin, resulting in her experiencing vulnerability in varying ways. Part of this emotion labor stemmed from her needing to use and teach English in her course. Lin considered Project SCILLA to be an opportunity to address the top-down demand of incorporating English, while at the same time engaging with her pedagogical beliefs and understanding of supporting her students. In her application, Lin had shared in her video audition that the project would assist in improving her pedagogical skills and would then “bring multilingual education to a high level” in her department (1-minute introduction video, May 5, 2020). Although Lin was placed in a situation that did not afford her the choice to change her pedagogy (Kelchtermans, 2009), she did opt to participate in Project SCILLA as a way to navigate this demand as she had not been trained in CLIL pedagogy.

When asked what metaphor she would use to describe herself as she participated in Project SCILLA, Lin mentioned in the first group interview that adopting CLIL was difficult since CLIL was “an absolutely new experience” given that she had “already developed [the content] for [her] course” (Focus group interview #1, Aug. 5, 2020). This need to adopt English and incorporate CLIL into teaching is further represented when Lin continues to address this metaphor question.

Excerpt 1: An essential part of my career

As for the metaphor, I would say that I am a first visitor [sic]. Something like that because I am trying to do something. I am trying to develop and understand deeply how to do it. And to you as my teachers, you really helped me with that really essential part of my career. (Focus group session 1, Aug. 5, 2020; emphasis added)

In describing herself as a “first visitor” in her adoption of a CLIL approach in her teaching, a sense of being overwhelmed and confused is captured in Lin’s metaphor as she, just as anyone who is visiting for the first time, would not have a complete sense of where to go or how to get to their destination. Because of changing structural conditions within her country that had mandated a national trilingual language policy that impacted her institution, Lin had to adopt an “appropriate” teaching methodology. As a result, Lin’s metaphor presents her being vulnerable because she had no experience with CLIL or EMI, and needed to develop the professional identity of a teacher who now had to carry out their instruction in English, while also having to shoulder the ethical responsibility of making sure that her students’ learning outcomes were met.

Before being part of Project SCILLA, Lin viewed her teacher identity at Hawk State University (HSU) differently from a content and language specialist. In response to the survey question that asked about the roles assumed in their university work before participating in Project SCILLA, Lin indicated she was primarily a lecturer. Specifically, she was mainly in charge of introducing the key concepts and processes related to mechanical engineering in Russian to her undergraduate engineering students, with Kazakh used sparingly. When asked in the survey about the amount of exposure to CLIL before the project, she indicated “0 years.” Lin was the least experienced in her workshop group, whereas other participants had some experience with this pedagogical approach. During one of the small group sessions where we discussed the metaphors the workshop participants chose, Lin again embraced a “visitor” persona and found herself struggling in the beginning as she disclosed:

Excerpt 2: My first experience

It was not so easy for me to [make a CLIL lesson], because I’ve never done such lessons ... The main challenge for me is to combine the [engineering] content and [English] language. I have to analyze what kind of language things and skills I have to include in my lesson in order to do it. I had to understand what to do with the language things. The language skills, it’s not easy.

This sense of uncertainty and determination—as emphasized by how it was not easy for her to design her CLIL lesson—points back to reported findings in earlier research (e. g., Karabassova, 2022b) that teachers who had to use CLIL in their classrooms often encountered difficulty incorporating CLIL into their pedagogical repertoires and thus needed to be properly trained and supported. Although Lin struggled at first with the integration of CLIL, she, fortunately, became more willing to explore and engage with this newly introduced teaching methodology.

Throughout the Project SCILLA series of workshops, Lin was willing to be professionally and openly vulnerable. This can be seen in the following excerpt, where Lin discusses her attempt to understand how to integrate CLIL with her teaching in order to grow professionally (Lasky, 2005; Song, 2016).

Excerpt 3: We are going to change that course

I taught growth and building machines discipline, it’s really hard. It’s really hard and really essential, the essential thing in the bachelor’s degree program, and for the specialization of technological machinery and equipment. So, it is really hard for them to analyze and understand such terms and maybe equations, and they do the course work, a lot of equations and calculations and drawings, of course ... [W]hen I have been working on that lesson, I was wondering how it’s hard for students, not for me, but for students and how it’s so difficult to understand. (Interview)

Echoing her sentiments in Excerpt 2, Lin reiterates in Excerpt 3 how hard it was to design her CLIL lesson, thereby underscoring her professional vulnerability. As suggested by Lasky (2005), Song (2016, 2022), and Z. Gao and Yuan (2024), vulnerability is neither an inherently negative nor a positive aspect. Rather, the experiences along with the available or unavailable resources, as we will see, often impact how someone like Lin may experience vulnerability. However, in the case of the above excerpt, vulnerability can be viewed as a positive quality despite top-down pressures from her institution and a national trilingual language policy that mandated the use of English in classroom instruction. This was because Lin was able to manage these pressures in a constructive way so as to bolster her pedagogical practices. Also, in disclosing the difficulties she encountered in having to wrestle with adopting CLIL pedagogy, she exhibited what researchers (e.g., Z. Gao & Yuan, 2024; Lasky, 2005; Song, 2016) describe as open vulnerability, or “a state of opening themselves up to adversity, acknowledging their limitations, and seek collaboration with others” (Z. Gao & Yuan, 2024, p. 319).

4.2 Negotiating Professional Vulnerability: Self-Perseverance During Unpredictable Pressures

As Lin began to integrate CLIL into her instruction, the pressure and stress grew because her institution reconstituted from a state school into a joint-stock company (i. e., a business entity where individuals can buy and own a portion of the company in the form of shares, which in turn yields certificates of ownership). Specifically, Lin’s institution changed from being a public higher education institution that was under the control of the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) to a joint-stock company that was under the control of a board of directors, with continued curricular oversight from MoES (see Hartley et al., 2016).

The neoliberally-inflected institutional reform also affected Lin, and presumably many of the other faculty and staff at HSU, as she attempted to contend with the different norms and standards that were emplaced due to this major restructuring effort. Having to negotiate such an effort underscores how professional vulnerability is indeed, as noted by Z. Gao and Yuan (2024), a construct that is contextually bounded and performed in terms of their sociocultural context through the varying professional judgments a teacher makes. Lin was wrestling with this joint-stock company development, which is best captured in the following email correspondence where we sought to schedule a time to observe Lin’s CLIL lesson as she had to deal with an increased workload:

Excerpt 4: Shifts in expectations in the joint-stock company

I am really sorry for my delay. The situation at my university has changed considerably. Nowadays, the university is a non-profit joint-stock company [Hawk State University]. Moreover, the workload has changed too. Consequently, it is so hard to plan the schedule for my [Project SCILLA] video-lesson now. (Sept. 3, 2020; email)

It was clear from the above excerpt and further email correspondence that Lin was extremely stressed and overwhelmed by the university’s transmuting international neoliberal pressures to the increased number of hours she had to put in at work. We were initially unsure how Lin’s workload had changed until we discussed with her, and other HSU teacher participants, how things were now different on the ground. As noted by one of the HSU teacher participants, the increased workload encountered by Lin was not simply an addition of duties with commensurate increased financial compensation. Instead, as another teacher participant informed us, the university administration “increased the number of hours per teacher’s salary, while the salary remained the same, that is, we need to work much more for the same money” (personal email correspondence). This increase in workload was also coupled with the need for teachers like Lin to quickly transition her instruction from in-person to a synchronously online modality as stay-at-home policies were beginning to sweep across Kazakhstan due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[1]

The stress of teaching online because of the pandemic became apparent as we reviewed Lin’s teaching video and found that she had to confront several recurring problems. The most prominent problem during this time was her lack of access to reliable resources such as stable internet, which caused Lin to frequently drop out of the virtual classroom. Specifically, throughout Lin’s hour-long class, she was disconnected from the class for about seven minutes at one point in time and several shorter periods of time thereafter. When this issue was discussed with Lin at the post-workshop interview, she informed us that it was not just the internet but the limitations of her university’s online teaching platform that she had to deal with. In the following excerpt, Lin describes this stressful work situation and (re)constructs the emotional experience by positioning herself in opposition to HSU’s online learning platform:

Excerpt 5: A lot of problems

Author 1: How did you feel when those [technology] issues came up?

Lin: Well, actually, I recorded my video on our platform, the university’s platform, and because of the many people were there [sic]. It’s almost impossible to record because only five people, as well as I remember, can be at the conference on our platform, but it was nine or ten people, and it was too much. That’s why the internet connection was not so good. And we have such problems and issues ... There were too many people at the same time, and it was not so good for the internet connection [sic]. That’s why the internet connection was not so good. And we have such problems and issues. And it problematic for me [sic]. It was problematic for me.

The last few lines of Excerpt 5 suggest Lin was attempting to live up to the expectations placed upon her by HSU as she needed to have proficient computer literacy skills to teach online. The last few lines of the above excerpt further suggest that she was expected to know how to use the technology to circumvent the issues she experienced teaching online. Interestingly, however, Lin appears to own this technological problem as her own mistake rather than allocating blame to the lack of resources made available to her at HSU:

Excerpt 6: My mistake

It was my mistake, actually. There were too many people at the same time and it [was] not so good for the internet connection. That’s why I had a lot of problems like login and others. I had to maybe choose another platform for recording the video.

Placing the blame on herself, Lin experienced a different kind of professional vulnerability due to HSU changing its expectations and teaching norms. According to Z. Gao and Yuan (2024) and as illustrated in Lasky (2005) and Song (2016), professional vulnerability can be both positively and negatively experienced in relation to the sociopolitical teaching context and the available resources a teacher has access to in order to support her students in the form of both content knowledge and linguistic development. On a negative note, Lin really should not have blamed herself for circumstances (i.e., poor internet service) that were beyond her control. Admittedly, these logistical problems hampered her ability to teach effectively. But rather than succumbing to such trying circumstances, she elected instead to turn this negative experience into a positive one to improve her students’ use of English in their virtual class. For example, to optimize internet connectivity and bandwidth, she let her students turn off their cameras. But she also found herself using more English in class—a CLIL expectation—and asked them to use English more regularly, too. In a post-workshop interview, Lin shared the following:

Excerpt 7: CLIL means English

Lin: Actually, my students speak Russian and Kazakh as their mother language. And several times, I did use Russian, yes.

Author 1: Okay, do you feel like the Russian, Russian, or Kazakh shouldn’t be used?

Lin: I think so. It’s normal in my lessons. I say, “please talk in English and speak in English with me and with each other; it’s a really good experience to practice English.”

(post-workshop interview)

Similar to the findings surrounding STEM teachers’ beliefs that they need to implement CLIL (e.g., Doiz et al., 2019), Lin viewed English positively by her declaring, “it’s really good experience to practice English” [sic]. However, just as Karabassova (2020, 2022a) reported that many teachers in Kazakhstan equated CLIL to English, Lin held the same view in that she saw the use of Kazakh or Russian as being a source of friction (because of local ethnic tensions), hence prompting to emphasize her students’ use of English.

While English was only used to present this information in a lecture, Lin used some of the seven CLIL principles (review Ball et al., 2015 discussed earlier) to teach her system analysis lesson (see Figure 1). In regard to the CLIL dimensions, Lin focused on the content and procedure throughout the lesson, while still making language salient. Lin used some of the CLIL guiding principles, in which she developed subject language awareness (Principle 2), where key concepts such as system (see Picture b in Figure 1) are bolded to draw learners’ attention with multiple example definitions (Principle 5—Making General Academic Language Explicit).

Figure 1

Lin’s CLIL Presentation Slides

While she brought in language activities such as a word search and crossword to engage with the language used in the class (Principle 7), Lin slowly attempted to make CLIL part of her teaching repertoire despite the pressures bestowed upon her.

Figure 2

Mediating Language Through a Word Search Activity

After the lesson, Lin highlighted that she needed to incorporate more language into her lesson. Specifically, she realized during the lesson that her students’ English proficiency was lower than expected.

Excerpt 8: My master’s students’ English is not so good

Maybe in the future, I have to maybe work deeply on that lesson, of course. And I have to maybe change some things. After watching my video, I tried to restructure my lecture a little bit. But I don’t know what to do because the level of English with my master’s students is not so good, actually, honestly speaking. And in that case, I have to change some things. I have to change maybe the content of the lesson or some words in order to adapt my lesson to the level of my master’s students in the future.

The above excerpt highlights Z. Gao and Yuan’s (2024) point as to how professional vulnerability is not only tied to the structural conditions that shape the methods used but also the “ethical dimensions of being responsible for the students” so they can have a “quality education” (p. 319). As mentioned previously, protective vulnerability also occurs when teachers who experience a high amount of stress and pressure decide to make pedagogical decisions in order to meet workplace demands (Z. Gao & Yuan, 2024; Song, 2016, 2022). In Lin’s case, one could also argue that she elected to take a path of less(er) resistance by enforcing a monolingual English policy in order to assuage her fear and anxiety of violating her university’s call to use English in CLIL classroom settings. This pedagogical decision also needs to be seen against a broader policy change that HSU was implementing and the pandemic that had started to affect Kazakhstan’s education system through the mandatory implementation of a stay-at-home policy at the time of our study.