This paper provides an overview of the multilingual context in which CLIL program exist in contemporary schooling. It explores the move to conceptualise language in schooling as a holistic entity, as opposed to being taught in partitioned silos for example of subjects/ EAL/ MFL. Questions addressed: • How can we view bilingual programmes like CLIL in a multilingual world? What does it mean for people in CLIL programmes? What are the challenges? • Why is CLIL in English dominant countries a way of providing high quality learning experiences? How can CLIL pedagogy be built on through whole school approaches towards interdisciplinary language learning e.g. bridging EAL, MFL etc.? Over the last 20 years or so, we observed a societal shift towards greater linguistic diversity in many of our school communities, and a theoretical shift towards more bilingual, multilingual or plurilingual understandings of language learning and teaching. These developments have given momentum to the idea of the multilingual turn in languages education (May 2014; Conteh & Meier 2014). This is associated above all with the understanding of language as social practice, learning as identity development through cross-curricular and critical pedagogic approaches (Meier, 2017). While there is increasing recognition of this in theory, the lack of teacher guidance and ingrained monolingual norms have been identified as associated challenges. I will draw on data from two-way immersion education in Berlin and London to illustrate how curricula are often based on monolingual assumptions, while learners themselves draw on their bilingual or plurilingual repertoires for learning. In this paper, I will show that CLIL has the potential to challenge such monolingual norms in the curriculum and offer an integrated pedagogy that can benefit diverse groups such as EAL and MFL learners.
