This symposium brings together, from France, Germany and Thaïland, researchers interested in the study of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, a dual-focused educational approach (Barwell, 2005; Mehisto, Marsh, & Frigols, 2008) in which a foreign language (FL) is used for the learning and teaching of content (e.g. science, mathematics, history, etc.), as well as language, with the objective of promoting both content and language mastery. CLIL presupposes that learning will include both content and FL learning, and that this learning will be integrated.
CLIL shares many characteristics with other types of bilingual education, such as content-based instruction (CBI) and immersion education, both widely adopted in North American contexts. However, this symposium focuses on CLIL, “an umbrella term covering a dozen or more educational approaches” (Mehisto & al., 2008, p.12), as “the extent and characteristics of its implementation [..] vary from one country to another depending on a great variety of factors” (Marsh & Frigols Martin, 2012, p. 5).
Reasons for the recent growing interest in CLIL include: diversifying methods; building intercultural understanding; enabling students to access international certification; preparing for future studies and working life, etc. More specifically, CLIL seeks to improve existing deficiencies in the formal learning and teaching of FL without impairing the content learning. The strong view on the positive benefits of CLIL assumes both FL and content capacities develop more efficiently and effectively (Gajo, 2007), while the weaker view is that the FL is enhanced without impairing the content development. However, these potential benefits have been questioned by several authors (Bruton, 2013; Dallinger & al., 2016) who argue that the actual outcomes in terms of both FL and content development are not that convincing.
Following Rumlich (2016), we argue that teacher- and lesson-related variables must be taken into account to give a more accurate picture of simultaneous content and foreign language learning. Consequently CLIL teachers’ profiles and training is a much-debated issue. In many countries, the non-native speaker of English is emerging as a particularly successful CLIL teacher whereas the dominant role of the native speaker teacher is increasingly undermined. As regards lessons, CLIL might require the implementation of a specific methodological approach or rather as Ioannou Giorgiou (2012) puts it, a fusion of content and language teaching methodologies.
The following trends can be noted in CLIL research:  the development of case reports, program descriptions, more classroom-based research, and an increasingly international perspective. Two contributions included in this symposium are based on classroom-based research: the first is a case study that examines a French secondary chemistry teacher implementing a lesson on the atom in English for students aged 15. The authors of this contribution focus more particularly on the teacher’s documentation work using the perspective of the documentational approach of didactics (Gueudet & Trouche, 2009). The second contribution analyses a short programme developed cooperatively by a physics lecturer and an English language teacher in a first-year university English course implemented at Aix-Marseille University, France. This second contribution focuses on CLIL teaching and learning using concepts from the Joint Action Theory in Didactics (JATD) to model the didactic activity. To conclude, the third contribution presents the results of a survey conducted in Thailand to identify teachers’ needs and mindset towards CLIL.  
With these three contributions the symposium seeks to explore the following questions: do teachers’ profiles have an impact on the way they design, implement and monitor CLIL lessons? Are the resources they use adapted to their students’ needs in terms of content and language acquisition? What kind of training programmes and qualifications are needed to improve the epistemic quality of CLIL lessons? 

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