I would say CLIL is almost certainly having more impact worldwide, what with the interest from publishers and school boards and the fact that it is associated with the primary and secondary schools where the vast majority of the world’s classroom hours happen. Read TEFL blogs, however, and you’d think that teaching unplugged was taking over the world.
Of course, a hardcore Dogmetist might say that the support from publishers for CLIL rather than Dogme is unsurprising, given the weight of books associated with the former and the lack of books suggested by the latter. The interest of school boards and education ministries is a bit more dificult to see as self-interest, but I guess they do have a history of investing in materials rather than teacher training.
Alternatively, maybe TEFL blogging is just a continuation of the history of teachers who have 1 to 14 adults in a classroom having far too much influence on an industry where most teaching goes on with classrooms of 30 to 70 kids, with university classes of up to 150 probably being the next biggest group. The fact that bloggers are a group who like to think outside the box and express themselves probably also makes Dogme a methodology that appeals to them more than it would to the average TEFLer on the street.
What think thee? Are the two philosophies mutually exclusive? Is the TEFL blogging emphasis on Dogme fair? Or is it just a passing fancy, or even just a figment on my imagination? Are TEFL bloggers more representative of English teachers than I’ve stated? Have your say:
TEFLtastic 
What you’ve missed is that the reason for the number of posts exploding in the sphere is that it’s a blog challenge… feel free to start one on CLIL if you like :-)
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Well, I’m one that says dogme would work with large classes n all that, but I’ve never had to teach more than 26 in a class, so my opinion doesn’t carry much weight in that regard.
Personally, I think CLIL makes more sense from a K-12 perspective. You’re knocking out two subjects with one stone. It’s simply more economical from a business perspective and I do believe it’s effective.
Also, I wouldn’t say they are exclusive. If you follow someone like Joe Bower, you see how he implements a dogme style in all subjects even though he probably isn’t even aware of what dogme is.
As for it being overrepresented in the ELT blogosphere, I’d agree. If you notice, most teachers first encounter with dogme is through blogs and Twitter. I’d say that’s a big reason. I think the appealing to outside the box thing and the nature of many of our classes is probably correct as well.
I for one hope the trend continues :)
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I’m a CLIL man myself, but mostly because I teach in an environment where content is key and I like the idea that there aren’t complex vs simple ways of expressing ideas (as traditional grammar teaching would have us believe), there are merely different linguistic ways of expressing these ideas.
Glad you’ve raised this discussion, Alex.
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This is my humble opinion: the reason why CLIL “is having more impact worldwide” is because there is govermental backing, and fish swim to where there is food. But, talking from the ground level, so to speak, a lot of teachers involved in CLIL are just swimming in the dark. The reason why publishers are jumping on the bandwagon is probably because of this, that a lot of CLIL teachers just don’t know what they are supposed to do in their class. For most of them, their methodology remains the same. They just do what they used to do, except that they now try to do it in a different language. There is still a long way to go if CLIL were to succeed in countries like Spain.
However, CLIL has been working in places like Singapore even before the word was invented.
Dogme, on the other hand, is unknown to most, and certainly not to the main curriculum teachers. Personally, I think there is no right or wrong. The only methodology that works is one that encompasses many facets. There has to be a feeling. Teaching is both a science and an art. Just like music, and even art itself.
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Interesting point, Alex.
While I don’t think CLIL and Teaching Unplugged are mutually exclusive, I think it could have a lot to do with which direction the CLIL teacher is coming from (language teacher starting to teach curricular subjects versus subject teacher starting to teach in a second language). Basically, I think you would really need to know your subject content (and not necessarily need it in preprovided material form) in order to be able to facilitate unplugged CLIL lessons.
I think it also depends a little on whether a lesson is heading (at any particular stage) more towards BICS or CALP. Unplugged teaching, rooted as it is in conversations, probably has more language teaching potential with the BICS end of things. But then again…
I would agree, however, that the real potential of something like Dogme depends a whole lot on how well its practitioners can demonstrate how it can work in large classes in school settings with highly structured curriculums. This has not happened to date (as far as I am aware).
What I can see the potential in is more in the way of more “unplugged moments” within regular or traditional class settings, including those with a CLIL orientation.
– J
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Oh interesting questions, Alex.
Are the two philosophies mutually exclusive? Here’s my take: I think we could find places where they would overlap, so for example, I think both would emphasize relevant learning content. But in practice, I think they generally manifest themselves in starkly different lessons, with a dogme lessons being ‘materials lite’, and CLIL lessons making extensive use of authentic texts and lots of exposure to contextualised uses of language.
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I’d ask mutually exclusive in terms of what? In terms of approach to the classroom? It’s easy to imagine how a sheltered program could be taught Dogme style (side rant: the acronym CLIL irks the heck out of me. How in any way is it different from the decades old concept of sheltered instruction? I understand the promotional power of new acronyms, the sense of newness given even when something isn’t, and the power of a new acronym when an organization wants to take ownership of an idea, but do we always have to accede?) I like Marcos Benevides take that Dogme can perhaps be seen as an approach to approaches—see first comment, that really anything, even a Grammar Translation lesson could be done Dogme style.
In terms of practioners? Again, don’t see any conflict. Have personally taught both styles and if I look back might even have taught Dogme-style CLIL lessons at some point in the early 90’s.
I think Vicki’s take is right. In practice, they are implemented in very different ways—but there’s no theoretical need that it be so.
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Please ignore ‘see first comment’ in above comment. That was my attempt to put in a link.
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I’m with Hugh about the CLIL acronym… though I thought it was a deliberate departure from the already well established CBI (of which sheltered instruction is one form), which had been around in Canada and the States for decades before anyone started mumbling CLIL (and potentially shocking people hearing it, before they realised there weren’t another two syllables coming…)
:-)
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