Biodata

Alfonso López Hernández holds a degree in Humanities from Concordia University (Canada) and a PhD from the University Complutense of Madrid. He works as a lecturer at Pontificia Comillas University, where he coordinates the English language area and CLIL in education degrees. His main areas of academic interest and research are active methodologies in bilingual teaching contexts, language analysis for teaching purposes, team teaching (co-teaching) and teacher training in subjects in subjects taught in English in higher education.

Website: alfonsolopezhernandez.com

Twice the teachers, twice the benefits? Helping CLIL Trainee Teachers Develop Collaborative Competence Through Co-Teaching

In bilingual education teamwork is necessary for teachers in order to coordinate with the different agents at school. Thus, collaborative competence is an important competence for CLIL teachers (Bertaux et al., 2010, Pérez Cañado, 2017). Research suggests that exposing trainee teachers to co-teaching experiences may help reduce the theory-practice gap, to improve reflective practice in the classroom, and to further develop teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (Murphy & Martin, 2015). This presentation describes an experience of collaborative teaching developed in a CLIL course at Universidad Pontificia Comillas. We will reflect on the rationale, the main teacher roles, the coordination challenges, and the initial assessment of the experience.