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Curators and Mediators of Language, Content, Pedagogy, and Technology: Teachers’ Expanding Roles in Fully-Online CLIL Contexts

  • Yuliya Novitskaya

    Yuliya Novitskaya is Head of the Foreign Language Department at Kazakh-American Free University (KAFU). She has been a lecturer, advisor, and manager of partnerships with universities, businesses, and foundations in Kazakhstan, Russia, Great Britain, Singapore, and the U.S.Correspondence

    , Rebekah R. Gordon

    Rebekah R. Gordon holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education from Michigan State University. Her research interests include transnationalism, language education, and curriculum design, with an emphasis on creating transformative and inclusive learning experiences.

    , Douglas K. Hartman

    Douglas K. Hartman is a professor of Technology & Human Learning with appointments in Teacher Education and Educational Psychology and Educational Technology at Michigan State University. His research focuses on the equitable use of technologies for human learning in a number of domains (e.g., school, community, work, sports).

    and Curtis Green-Eneix

    Curtis Green-Eneix is a research assistant professor in the English Language Education Department at the Education University of Hong Kong. His research areas include language policy in secondary and higher education, identity, ideology, emotions, and issues of inequity surrounding language, race, and social class.

Published/Copyright: February 28, 2025
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Abstract

As world events have morphed teachers’ roles within English medium of instruction (EMI) contexts to incorporate more online teaching practices, teachers’ integration of digital tools has faced technological and curricular challenges. While previous research has examined the integration of digital tools in face-to-face and hybrid EMI settings (e. g., Finardi, 2015; O’Dowd, 2018), more research is needed to understand the familiarization process teachers engage in as they implement fully-online teaching to support their content and language integrated learning (CLIL) teaching. As part of a larger project, this case study sets out to fill this gap by examining the practices and perspectives of 30 Kazakhstani university teachers who adopted CLIL approaches while needing to adapt to fully-online teaching contexts. Using the concept of technological pedagogical content knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) in tandem with Ball et al.’s (2016) seven CLIL principles as a framework, this study thematically analyzed workshop artifacts, survey responses, semi-structured interview transcripts, and videos from online class lessons to find that teachers were mediators and curators of content, language, pedagogy, and digital tools. The findings offer pedagogical insights for the implementation of professional development (PD) to prepare teachers to meaningfully curate and mediate technology into their CLIL pedagogy to teach content within EMI contexts.

About the authors

Yuliya Novitskaya

Yuliya Novitskaya is Head of the Foreign Language Department at Kazakh-American Free University (KAFU). She has been a lecturer, advisor, and manager of partnerships with universities, businesses, and foundations in Kazakhstan, Russia, Great Britain, Singapore, and the U.S.Correspondence

Rebekah R. Gordon

Rebekah R. Gordon holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education from Michigan State University. Her research interests include transnationalism, language education, and curriculum design, with an emphasis on creating transformative and inclusive learning experiences.

Douglas K. Hartman

Douglas K. Hartman is a professor of Technology & Human Learning with appointments in Teacher Education and Educational Psychology and Educational Technology at Michigan State University. His research focuses on the equitable use of technologies for human learning in a number of domains (e.g., school, community, work, sports).

Curtis Green-Eneix

Curtis Green-Eneix is a research assistant professor in the English Language Education Department at the Education University of Hong Kong. His research areas include language policy in secondary and higher education, identity, ideology, emotions, and issues of inequity surrounding language, race, and social class.

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Acknowledgments

This project was conducted with funding from the U.S.-Kazakhstan University Partnerships program funded by the U.S. Mission to Kazakhstan and administered by American Councils [Award number SKZ100-19-CA-0149]. The authors thank American Councils for their support in advancing Kazakh-American academic partnerships, and colleagues at Kazakh-American Free University for their logistical and technical support throughout the project.

Published Online: 2025-02-28
Published in Print: 2025-02-25

© 2025 BFSU, FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

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