Eriksson, Andreas

Gustafsson, Magnus

Paretti, Marie

Chalmers Research

What is the impact of integrating language and content in higher education (ICLHE) ?

Chalmers Publication Library

WRAB III: Roundtable: ‘What is the impact of integrating language and content in higher 
education (ICLHE)?’ 
Recognised under different terms in our respective higher education contexts, the notion of 
integrating communication development within disciplinary courses has seen increasing 
application since the late 90s. We talk of WID in a US context, ICLHE in Europe, and CLIL for 
‘content and language integrated learning’ in still other places; here we use the acronym ICL 
(integrated content and language learning) as a general term for these efforts. This integration is 
particularly important in the 21st century as writing circulates through professional workplaces 
formally and informally through digital media. Writing in disciplinary contexts is no longer 
simply a proposal at the beginning of a project and a formal report at the end; instead, it is 
embedded in the myriad of emails, texts, chats, and notes that circulate throughout projects 
across domains. Support for integrating writing development into content area courses draws 
from the literature in educational development from various points of view, including situated 
learning (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989), cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, 2006; Collins, 
Brown, & Newman, 1990), constructive alignment (Biggs & Tang 2007), disciplinary discourse 
and graduate profiles (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Russell, 2001; Trowler & Cooper, 2002; Ivanič, 
2004; Barrie, 2007; Jones, 2009). In addition, there is increasing support for integrated 
interventions across courses and curricula. Despite this support and the growing importance of 
ICL, we have not yet established reliable ways of measuring the impact of this integration – the 
impact, that is, of integrating the teaching and learning of writing with the teaching and learning 
of domain knowledge.  In fact, have we even defined what impact is it that we seek and what 
didactic approaches we should be comparing with? 
To some extent, the wide-ranging literature on writing assessment is relevant to assessing writing 
in integrated contexts as well, and work by Huot (2002; Huot & O'Neill, 2008), Adler-Kassner 
and O’Neill (2010), and Yancey (Murphy & Yancey, 2007; Yancey, 1999; Yancey & Huot, 
1997) all address the assessment of writing generally and in writing across the curriculum 
contexts. O’Donovan, Price & Rust (2008), for example, suggest a framework for assessment 
that implies ICL in its emphasis on the discourse community. Still, this literature does not really 
enable us to fully explore the impact of the interdisciplinary framework in which integrated 
content and language learning occurs. The kinds of efforts currently underway are seeking, in a 
variety of ways, not simply to “add” a writing assignment to a disciplinary content course, but to 
leverage and build on the ways in which communicative practices in a discipline interact with, 
contribute to, and are shaped by other disciplinary practices, knowledge, and epistemologies. 
And in the educational literature, interdisciplinarity has become an increasingly critical 
framework for exploring student learning and development (e.g., Boix Mansilla; Boix Mansilla, 
2005; Boix Mansilla & Duraising, 2007; Boix Mansilla, Duraisingh, Wolfe, & Haynes, 2009; 
Lattuca, 2010; Lattuca, Voigt, & Fath, 2004). Scholars like Boix Mansilla and Lattuca argue for 
the ways in which interdisciplinarity – the bridging of epistemologies and values from multiple 
domains – can enhance student learning. Yet little work to date has considered ICL assessment 
from this interdisciplinary perspective. 
To begin to address this gap, particularly as it affects 21st century writing contexts, in the 
proposed roundtable, we will discuss a series of questions associated with the assessment of ICL, 
and invite additional questions from the participants. As we consider the effects of ICL on both 
content and language learning, the core questions the roundtable will address include: 
• What outcomes and outputs are we measuring? 
• What outcomes and outputs should we be measuring?  
• How and when do we measure? 
• How do we define what an ‘effective’ intervention is? 
• What are the baselines we measure against? 
These questions seek to explore both what is happening now in ICL assessment and what can 
and should be happening as we move forward. They address the kinds of learning outcomes ICL 
might support for students, the kinds of writing products and textual artifacts we should be 
examining in our assessments, the ways in which those products and artifacts should be 
measured and analyzed, and, ultimately, the ends to which our assessment should be directed. 
How can we begin to understand and identify “effective” when learning to write and learning in 
a discipline are integrated? At the same time, they raise questions for researchers as we consider 
the relationships between research and assessment. Should our research questions follow or lead 
to assessment efforts? How might research and assessment in ICL inform one anothers. How do 
the wide variety of writing contexts and media? 
The roundtable conveners will share very briefly some examples from their respective contexts 
to begin to set the scene for the roundtable. The panelists bring experiences in Swedish and U.S. 
ICL programs that include integration at both the course and curricular level, and have been 
engaged in exploring, developing, and implementing a range of ICL assessment approaches for a 
number of years. Their discussions will highlight not only successes, but also failures and 
challenges, with particular attention to the demands posed by the increasingly diverse modes and 
contexts in which disciplinary writing occurs. The session then provide time for participants to 
collaborate in small groups, guided by roundtable panelists, to interrogate the questions above 
more closely as they operate in individual contexts. Following time for the small groups to report 
out, the panelists will synthesize the findings and conclusions that emerge from the discussion 
and highlight promising future directions.  
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What is the impact of integrating language and content in higher education (ICLHE) ?

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