Scaffolding Strategies in the CLIL Classroom: A Case Study

In Vietnam, the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach has been required to serve as one of the underlying themes for enhancing foreign language competency. However, both educators and CLIL learners have concurrently experienced content-related challenges as well as linguistic difficulties. Scaffolding strategies, then, appear to be a teacher’s effective assistant to lessen students’ academic burden. A case study design was employed to explore the types and frequency of scaffolding strategies that a Mathematics teacher used in a Mathematics - English classroom. The study is based on the two phenomenal works in the field of scaffolding proposed by Wood et al. (1976) and Walqui (2006). The data consists of four online observations along with four semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed the use of ten scaffolding strategies namely, recruitment, reduction in degrees of freedom, direction maintenance, marking critical features, frustration control, demonstration/modeling, bridging, contextualising, schema building, and developing metacognition. Among these, recruitment, marking critical features, and frustration control topped the list as the most commonly used strategies. On the contrary, re-presenting text was excluded from all lessons. CLIL teachers could refer to the results of this research to reflect upon their own teaching practice and make more informed choices of the scaffolding strategies employed in the classroom. The study also proposes implications for researchers in similar teaching contexts to conduct further studies on related topics.