INVESTIGATING OPEN-MINDEDNESS AMONG CLIL TEACHERS

Dr Katarzyna Lidia Papaja, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland;      Abstract: The notion of what it means to be a good teacher is a very complicated one, as good teachers need to have many qualities. One of them is open-mindedness, which helps individuals build knowledge about specific issues or points of view as well as form recommendations and give advice. Open-minded teachers do not jump to conclusions. Instead, they look for and examine all of the available evidence before forming an opinion. As for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) which is “a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language” (Coyle et al., 2010: 1), open-mindedness is very crucial. The teachers need to be open-minded to the language and content knowledge at the same time, which is very challenging.

The aim of the presentation is to discuss the research results on one of the most important character virtue, namely open-mindedness. The research was conducted among CLIL teachers for whom this virtue seems to be indispensable bearing in mind various obstacles, which they have to face in CLIL education e.g. lack of teaching materials. In order to collect the data, the VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) was disseminated among Primary, Junior High School and Secondary School teachers. The VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) is a 120-item measure of character strengths, with each of 24 character strengths assessed by 10 items. In the following presentation, only the data concerning open-mindedness will be discussed.

References:

Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). Content and Language Integrated Learning. UK: Cambridge University Press