CLIL and Neuroscience: How are they related.

At first glance, it is not immediate what the connection could be between neuroscience, intended as that to do with controlled laboratory studies of rodents, rat brain slices and even neuronal cells grown in 60mm-diameter plastic Petri dishes, and CLIL, intended as a means to provide additional foreign language learning through 50:50/Content:Language teaching. In fact, neuroscience is grounded in the basic sciences, which advocate the use of positivistic research methods through which findings can be generalized and applied across the board: anti-malarial medication which works for one works for all and energy-saving light-bulbs help everyone everywhere reduce electricity consumption. Such experimental reproducibility characterizes the pure sciences and makes up the “crowning achievements of Western Civilization (Denzin/Lincoln 1998: 7), all of which has advanced us away from witchcraft and alchemy towards modern-day medicine, technology and science....In this chapter, I will briefly discuss some concerns regarding education in the 21st century, particularly science and language education (Section 1), and argue that CLIL can provide a learning context which suits 21st century reality. I ground this proposal within basic neuroscience research findings and offer a CLIL-(neuro)Science activity as an example (Section 2). In Section 3, I analyse the CLIL activity presented and discuss why CLIL-learning, done well, can be highly brain-compatible.