Implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes in Public Administration: Russian students’ and matriculants’ opinion about their first CLIL experience

Teaching Public Administration. 2016. Vol. 34. No. 3. P. 229–246.

Rubtcova M., Kaisarova V. P.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a pedagogic approach that has developed in response to the demand for integrating education in both school/university subjects and language skills. Our paper is devoted to the implementation of CLIL programmes in Public Administration within a particular sociolinguistic context: that of Russian universities. Using CLIL as a theoretically grounded framework and as an ideological platform of such an introduction, we have described Public Administration students' and matriculants' ideas on their current CLIL experience. Data comes from a survey of university students (N = 141) and formalised interviews with St. Petersburg universities' matriculants (N = 43). We draw the conclusion that their social environment is mainly monolingual and they perform daily communication in Russian. This is one of the reasons to promote CLIL as a strong methodological conception in the practice of teaching Public Administration in English in Russian higher education institutions.

Keywords: Russia, bilingual education in public administration, CLIL in higher education