Spontaneous teacher collaboration in early primary CLIL classrooms with pupils of special educational needs (SEN): A dynamic translanguaging and trans-semiotizing perspective

While a wealth of research demonstrates the benefits of translanguaging and trans-semiotizing (TL-TS) pedagogy in secondary content and language integrated learning (CLIL) settings, little research has explored teacher collaboration in early primary CLIL classrooms nor the operationalisation of co-teaching CLIL classes with students of special educational needs. Drawing on the recent dynamic, distributed view of TL and flows, the study intends to investigate how CLIL co-teachers support primary English-as-an-additional-language classrooms with students of special educational needs in learning to write Information Reports. Five videotaped lessons were analysed to identify patterns of teacher collaboration via TL-TS. The findings show that the co-teachers’ joint orchestration of semiotic resources on different spatio-temporal scales serves to: (1) engage students’ co-construction of the thematic patterns in the target academic genre; (2) create disciplining spaces in classroom contingencies; and (3) enable knowledge brokering and foreground students’ achievement in discipline-specific activities. The results indicate that CLIL teacher collaboration should be expanded with planned spaces and spontaneous and dynamic resources to meet the emerging needs of diverse learners. Copyright © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.