Projects

Ongoing projects

  • SHIFT: Understanding the Internationalisation of Higher Education from the Student Perspective:  A Longitudinal Examination of Disciplinary Literacies in English-medium Education

    07/2020-06/2024
    headed by Emma Dafouz, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain

    The main aim of the SHIFT project is to focus on students' learning experience in English-medium programmes in higher education. More particularly, the study will focus on the examination of students’ Disciplinary Literacies (DLs) from a longitudinal perspective.

    https://www.ucm.es/shift/

  • EMI in European HE: English as a Medium of Instruction in European Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities for Europe and the UK

    11/2020-10/2024
    UKRI project; headed by Kristina Hultgren, Open University, UK

    This project aims to provide substantial research into English as medium of instruction in European Higher Education by combining expertise from various disciplines and by undertaking empirical research across European sites. The research objectives include, for instance, understanding the causes of the shift to EMI at European universities; innovating theoretical, methodological and conceptual frameworks to enable explanatory accounts of multilingualism; or developing an evidence-based best practice framework to ensure that EMI is implemented without negative consequences for learning, teaching and wider society.

    https://www.emieurope.org/

  • ADIBE: Attention to Diversity in Bilingual Education

    09/2018-08/2021
    ERASMUS+ project; headed by María Luisa Pérez Cañado, Universidad de Jaen, Spain

    This project, which combines researchers from Austria, Britain, Italy, Finland, Germany and Spain, is concerned with the possibilities and challenges of offering CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) education to all learners, irrespective of their socioeconomic status, educational background, or achievement level. By focussing on inclusive CLIL settings catering for all of their diverse learners, the first aim is to gain empirical information on teacher training needs, core difficulties that need to be addressed and good practices that can be learned from. On the basis of such research-based insights, project-based teaching activities will then be designed to cater to diversity in CLIL, which will, finally, feed into teacher training modules. Overall, the project pursues the overarching intention to contribute to making CLIL accessible to all learners.

    https://adibeproject.com/

  • LongAd-CLIL: a longitudinal corpus-based analysis of advancedness in CLIL, subject literacies, classroom practices and participant perspectives from primary through secondary education

    2019-2021
    headed by Ana Llinares (?), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

    The purpose of this project is to explore the development of CLIL students participating in Comunidad de Madrid bilingual programmes from the end of primary and throughout the 4 years of secondary education, taking into account the effect of studying in either high- or low-exposure trajectories.

    https://uam-clil.org/longad-clil/

Completed projects

  • Trans-CLIL - UAM-CLIL research group: Integrating and assessing content and language in the transition from primary to secondary bilingual education

    2015-2018
    headed by Ana Llinares, UAM Madrid; Austrian Partner: Christiane Dalton-Puffer, University of Vienna

    The purpose of this project is to investigate the effects of studying in either a high or low exposure track in bilingual schools on the development of learners’ academic language competence as they complete the transition from primary to secondary education. The main objective of the Trans-CLIL is to investigate the differential effect of studying in either a high or low exposure track on the development of students’ linguistic competence for expressing academic content in English (and) Spanish.

    https://uam-clil.org/trans-clil/

  • Interlica: Challenges in the internationalisation of university teaching

    2013-2018
    headed by Emma Dafouz & Cristina del Campo Campos, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain

    Interlica, an international and research project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINEICO), brought together collaboration between linguists and economy and business teachers, belonging to five different European universities. The project’s main objective was to explore the impact that the use of English has in HE contexts where it is an additional language for most lecturers and students.

    https://www.ucm.es/data/cont/media/www/pag-71259/Guia_interlica.pdf
  • “On the implementation of the new CLIL requirements for Austrian HTLs. Question development for quality assessment and case studies on classroom practices”

    2015-2017
    headed by Ute Smit; funding by BMBF Austrian Ministry of Education and Women

    This educational linguistics project (2015-2016) builds on a previous study undertaken at this department (cf. Dalton-Puffer et al 2009) and deals with CLIL in HTLs (= Höhere Technische Lehranstalten, i.e. upper secondary colleges leading to university-entrance qualifications combined with professional training in a range of technical, industrial or craft specialisations). The present project will offer an evaluation of the implementations of the new curricular requirements for CLIL-teaching, which specify that at least 72 CLIL lessons must take place for all HTL students in each of the last three school years.
  • AAIR “Without English this is just not possible…”: studies of language policy and practice in international universities from Europe and Asia

    2014-2015
    headed by Will Baker, University of Southhampton, & Julia Hüttner, University of Vienna; Funding by Annual Adventures in Research, University of Southampton

    https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/390811/

  • “Learning disciplinary language through CLIL”

    2013-2015
    headed by Julia Hüttner and Ute Smit, University of Vienna; funded by BMUKK Austrian Ministry of Education, Art and Culture

  • ConCLIL: Language and content integration: towards a conceptual framework

    2012-2014
    headed by Tarja Nikula, University of Jyväskylä, Finland; financed by the Academy of Finland

    In collaboration with colleagues from Finland, Spain and the UK, my research aim within this project is to provide conceptual and theoretical grounding to a presently thriving area of applied linguistic research at the nexus of internationalisation in higher education and second/foreign language learning and use: the ‘Englishization’ of higher educational institutions and its implications for teaching and learning. ICLHE (Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education) practices are thriving in many countries world-wide, such as in Austria, where practically all universities have recently introduced English-medium programmes or expressed their intention to do so (for more information on my research interests within this project see my “Future research plans”).

    The ConCLIL project focuses on second or foreign language-mediated education across all educational levels. Based on their previously undertaken classroom discourse-based CLIL studies, the international project members use their research stays at the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Jyväskylä to “work [in subgroups] towards a conceptual framework of CLIL by research-based problematization of its central notions language and content and especially that of their integration."

    http://conclil.jyu.fi/