The Keeping of Journals in CLIL Contexts: How to Make Reflection Possible by Teachers and Pupils

This paper aims to focus on experimental research don CLIL carried out as part of a PhD program at the Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Basilicata. The research project involved seven experimental primary school classes and seven control classes in the Lombardy region for two consecutive years. This paper examines the results of the qualitative analysis of the journal kept by the teachers throughout the process. That is, in order to have a better understanding of how each single CLIL project developed, teachers and pupils were required to keep a journal. Both of the journals were structured with a series of entries on which to reflect. This tool also provided subsidiary information which was extremely useful in explaining the results and revealing the teachers' and students' attitudes toward the CLIL approach. This paper may be useful for teachers and teacher trainers because it offers the possibility to consider the journal in different ways: as a pedagogical tool that promotes learning, as a methodological tool which gives and an insight into CLIL experiences and as a professional tool which encourages the development of reflective thinking.