title: Exploring teachers’ perceptions of the potential of CLIL-based approaches for students’ ICC development in Chinese higher education
Creators: name: Xin, Yanru
Publisher: name: The University of Edinburgh
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
subject: Content and Language Integration (CLI)
subject: Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC)

description: This study is based on the premise that developing Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) enables individuals to better navigate the opportunities and challenges of a globalised, interdependent, and multicultural world. From this perspective, ICC encourages individuals to connect and engage with others across languages and cultures. However, communicating meaningfully with people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds requires competences in using a range of resources and strategies effectively. In educational settings, therefore, language classrooms play a vital role in helping individuals thrive in an increasingly interconnected world. This study explores how intercultural language teaching and learning might enhance students’ grasp of culturally embedded knowledge and promote the meaningful application of their language skills across boundaries. To support working towards this goal, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has emerged as a dual-focussed educational approach to learning and teaching. CLIL emphasises learning both subject content and languages, fostering sustainable deeper learning by illuminating social and discipline-specific literacies and cultures. This approach has become more established in some educational contexts within the global framework of bilingual education leading to a significant increase in CLIL-based courses within Chinese higher education over the past decade. While existing literature highlights the effectiveness of CLIL, particularly regarding Chinese students’ language output and subject knowledge, empirical studies on the enhancement of ICC through CLIL-based approaches, focussing on teacher perceptions, remain limited. Thus, this research seeks to bridge this gap through an exploratory single case study framed by national and international prevailing discourses around CLIL and ICC alongside teacher interviews in one CLIL-oriented university in China. Drawing on two data sources, the study involves: a) document analysis of relevant educational policies, internal resources such as training programmes and course syllabi, teaching materials, and a published book that serves as a blueprint for many universities in China focussing on the CLIL-guided curriculum and teaching reforms for English majors; and b) semi-structured interviews with 12 teacher participants purposively recruited based on their research and relevant teaching experience in the field of CLIL and ICC. Thematic analysis enables the researcher to synthesise findings and discuss the emergent factors of CLIL-based approaches that the teachers perceive influence students’ ICC development in China. The findings indicate that CLIL-based approaches have the potential to develop intercultural attitudes, critical cultural awareness, intercultural knowledge, and action-taking among students. Integrating these factors into CLIL programmes leads to the adaptation of a Chinese model for CLIL seeking to enhance students’ ICC and provide a foundation for extensive future investigations. This research also contributes to effectively localising CLIL practices in Chinese higher education, offering valuable insights for the future of foreign language education across multiple levels and institutions both in China and internationally.