Language and critical thinking at the secondary school level in Italy: The impact of CLIL

While critical thinking is becoming gradually more important in education, memorisation of rules, procedures and facts is still predominant. Italy has undergone a moderate level of innovation over the last two decades. Despite this, rote-learning strategies appear to be the norm at secondary education level (Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019). This paper examines whether the currently compulsory CLIL activity, with its focus on higher-order thinking skills (Coyle et al., 2010), has had a beneficial impact on learning in Italian secondary education. More specifically, teachers’ current practices and students’ reactions to them after the official CLIL implementation are discussed, through analysis of data collected from 1,343 respondents to a questionnaire distributed throughout the country. The findings align with the thinking-centered, integrative nature of the approach advanced by CLIL scholars, providing evidence both of the success of CLIL teacher training measures in the Italian context and of further cognitive achievements stemming from CLIL activity. However, critical considerations of the need to update assessment measures in light of these findings are included.