CLIL in junior vocational secondary education: challenges and opportunities for teaching and learning

In many countries, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in secondary education, whether by default or design, focuses primarily on high-achieving students. This paper presents a study of CLIL programs for a different population: junior vocational students in the lower streams of secondary education in the Netherlands. On the basis of a context description of the highly streamed Dutch secondary education system and a literature review related to bilingual education for lower achievers and vocational CLIL, the paper examines the implementation of bilingual education programs at school and task level. More specifically, it describes the perceptions and motivation of junior vocational students and their teachers with respect to the organization and practice of vocational CLIL. As a result, the paper reports the successful linguistic, curricular, and pedagogical characteristics of bilingual education programs for this type of learner and summarizes the challenges and opportunities for CLIL in junior vocational education.