Taking Advantage of Sustainable Development Goals in Project Based CLIL: An International Experience to Enhance Communication Among Primary Students

Article Sidebar

PDF (English)

Main Article Content

Laura Calzado Villavecchia
Escola Dolors Monserdà-Santapau (Barcelona)
Carlos Izcara Cayuela
Institut Sants (Barcelona)

One of the educational challenges that European countries face nowadays is to include the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into their curriculums so that they could be achieved in 2030. Currently, the Catalan government has incorporated them into the last updated basic education curriculum in 2022. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and Project Based Learning (PBL) have shown their effectiveness to boost collaborative work and communicative competence. Furthermore, the inclusion of the SDGs in an international context could increase students’ motivation towards the learning of English as a foreign language. This article presents the design, implementation and the students’ outcomes of an international project that was carried out in English with primary students from Barcelona, Bogotá and Toronto. The results of Spanish students seem to suggest that they are motivated to participate in communicative situations when they are engaged in an international blended CLIL-PBL project on global issues related to SDGs. A welcoming and trusting environment is created in class so the engagement of most of the students rises, the feeling of belonging to a community is strengthened and their willingness of communicating in English is enhanced.

Paraules clau
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), Project Based Learning (PBL), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), motivation, collaborative learning, communication

Article Details

Com citar
Calzado Villavecchia, Laura; and Izcara Cayuela, Carlos. “Taking Advantage of Sustainable Development Goals in Project Based CLIL: An International Experience to Enhance Communication Among Primary Students”. CLIL Journal, vol.VOL 1, no. 1, pp. 74-92, doi:10.60940/cjv1n1id430058.
Drets
Creative Commons License

Aquesta obra està sota una llicència internacional Creative Commons Reconeixement-NoComercial 4.0.

(c) Laura Calzado Villavecchia, Carlos Izcara Cayuela, 2024

Biografies de l'autor/a

Laura Calzado Villavecchia, Escola Dolors Monserdà-Santapau (Barcelona)

Laura Calzado Villavecchia is an English CLIL Teacher in Primary Education and a CLIL Trainer at the Departament d’Educació of the Generalitat de Catalunya

Carlos Izcara Cayuela, Institut Sants (Barcelona)

Carlos Izcara Cayuela is a Social Sciences CLIL Teacher and a CLIL Trainer at the Departament d’Educació of the Generalitat de Catalunya

Referències

Alan, B., Stoller, F. (2005). Maximizing the benefits of project work in foreign language classrooms. English Teaching Forum, 43(4), 10–21.

Bernaus, M., Wilson, A., & Gardner, R. (2009). Teachers’ motivation, classroom strategy use, students’ motivation and second language achievement. Porta Linguarum, 12, 25–36. https://doi.org/10.30827/digibug.31869

Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (2006). Education for the knowledge age: Design-centered models of teaching and instruction. Handbook of Educational Psychology, 2, 695–713. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203874790.ch30

Cates, K., & Jacobs, G. (2006). Global issue projects in the English language classroom. In G. Beckett, P. Miller (Eds.), Project-based and foreign language education (Research in second language learning) (pp. 167–180). IAP.

Chen, C. H., & Yang, Y. C. (2019). Revisiting the effects of project-based learning on students’ academic achievement: A meta-analysis investigating moderators. Educational Research Review, 26, 71–81 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.11.001

Fried-Booth, D. L. (1986). Project Work: Resource books for teachers. OUP.

Generalitat de Catalunya (2022). Educació per als objectius de desenvolupament sostenible. Retrieved 9 October 2022 from https://xtec.gencat.cat/ca/curriculum/primaria/orientacions/educacio-objectius-desenvolupament-sostenible-ods/

Generalitat de Catalunya (2022). DECRET 175/2022, de 27 de setembre, d'ordenació dels ensenyaments de l’educació bàsica. DOGC 8762 29.09.2022. https://dogc.gencat.cat/ca/document-del-dogc/?documentId=938401

Harmer, N. (2014). Literature Review - University of Plymouth. Retrieved June 26, 2022, from https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/uploads/production/document/path/2/2733/Literature_review_Project-based_learning.pdf

Hedge, T. (1993). Key concepts in ELT. ELT Journal, 47(3), 275–277.

Kilpatrick, W. H. (1918). The project method. Teachers College. Retrieved June 26, 2022, from http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/kilpatrick1918/index.html

Knoll, M. (1997). The project method: Its vocational education origin and international development. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education, 34(3), 59–80.

Knoll, M. (2014). Project method. In C.D. Phillips (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational theory and philosophy (pp. 665–669). Thousand Oaks.

KBI. (2022 October 1). About knowledge building international. KBI. https://ikit.org/kbi/

Larmer, J., Mergendoller, J., & Boss, S. (2015). Gold standard PBL: Essential project design elements. Retrieved from https://www.pblworks.org/blog/gold-standard-pbl-essential-project-design-elements

Lasagabaster, D. (2017). Language learning motivation and language attitudes in multilingual Spain from an international perspective. The Modern Language Journal, 101(3), 583–596. 10.1111/modl.12414 0026-7902/17/583–596

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 97–118). Cambridge University Press.

Stoller, F. (1997). Project work. A means to promote language and content. English Teaching Forum, 33(2), 10–15.

Stoller, F. (2006). Establishing a theoretical foundation for project-based learning in second and foreign language contexts. In G. Beckett & P. Miller. (Ed.), Project-based second and foreign language education: Past, present, and future (pp. 19–40). Information Age Publishing.

Thomas, J. W. (2000). A review of research on project-based learning. Retrieved June 26, 2022, from http://www.bobpearlman.org/BestPractices/PBL_Research.pdf

United Nations. (2022, April 5). Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Sustainable Development Goals. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/cities/