A Promising Mythconception

In When More Is Never Enough, we explored Problem 1: “We Need More,” the tendency to rely on additional English as an Additional Language (EAL) staffing and resources, and Opportunity 1: “We Need Different,” a call to rethink roles and practices to create a truly inclusive, multilingual learning culture. Language and content learning are interdependent, and the second article in this Multilingualism in International Schools series illuminates the potential in every classroom: for all teachers to leverage language as not only a medium of instruction but also a medium of learning, so multilingual students have the opportunity to develop conceptual understanding together with language proficiency.  -Jon Nordmeyer

Problem 2: Every Teacher is a Language Teacher

International schools often lay claim to the mantra that “every teacher is a language teacher.”  The notion is rooted in the 1975 United Kingdom Bullock Report, which recommended a language-across-the-curriculum policy, including for children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds (van der Walt & Ruiters, 2023). To date, these are more likely words than actions, as there remains a lingering perception that the teaching of language to multilingual learners is, for the most part, the responsibility of English as an Additional Language (EAL) specialists. Fortunately, when EAL teachers are unavailable, many content teachers help multilingual learners navigate classroom texts and tasks to the best of their ability, using what they have learned by default and, now, aided by translation apps and the shift away from English-only policies toward translanguaging. However, without essential dispositions, knowledge, and skills, well-intentioned teachers risk becoming unwitting players in a word-action misalignment problem, where the mantra is continually repeated but may not be true. 

Research indicates that teachers possess different dispositions toward embracing the dual role of teaching language as a content teacher (Kim et al, 2024; van der Walt & Ruiters, 2023). On one side are those willing to advocate for and integrate content and language for multilingual learners. On the other side are teachers who endorse a content-language separatist ideology, arguing that language proficiency is a prerequisite for content learning and that including non-proficient multilingual learners hinders instructional pacing. Middle-of-the-road teachers argue that whether language and content should be taught sequentially or simultaneously depends on the multilingual learners’ English proficiency levels, implying that new-to-English students require intensive instruction delivered before entering content classrooms. These teachers’ outlooks seemed contingent on their specific classroom contexts and the instructional challenges they face with multilingual learners, particularly in the practical issues of planning and implementing language and disciplinary literacy strategies (Asher & Pichery, 2024; Chen et al., 2022). Even teachers who are willing to incorporate language with content often feel professionally inadequate, as typical teacher preparation programs tend to pay less attention to the linguistic aspects of teaching multilingual learners than to the socio-cultural implications (Berg & Huang, 2015; Najarro & Harwin, 2025; Schulze & Dougherty, 2023). 

Language education scholars argue that it is of paramount importance that teachers develop pedagogical knowledge of the language of schooling to become professionals capable of functioning in dynamic, multilingual educational settings (Accurso, 2017; Bunch, 2024; de Oliveira, 2020; Lyon & Mackura, 2023; Walqui et al., 2025). The language of schooling encompasses a range of linguistic resources that differ from those employed in informal, everyday English interactions. That is, the language of texts and tasks includes a higher proportion of general academic and domain-specific vocabulary, increased sentence complexity and sophistication, and ideas connected through more prolonged stretches of tightly organized discourse. With this knowledge, teachers can draw students’ attention to these linguistic resources to make the workings of language visible. Teachers do not need to be linguists, but they do need to have a functional understanding of how language works in their subject areas to design language-focused instruction and scaffolding strategies that can accelerate the language and literacy development of multilingual learners (Schulze & Dougherty, 2023). Unfortunately, classroom teachers may lack this knowledge, thereby impeding their capacity to live up to the mantra of “every teacher is a language teacher.” 

What most teachers know about multilingual learners is their language proficiency levels, reported numerically through placement tests and school procedures. However, the instructional application of this information varies. Teachers who view multilingual learners through an asset-based lens and who are skilled in differentiation practices use this data to inform instruction, just as they do with all learners.  While differentiation does facilitate multilingual learners’ access to content materials and tasks, it is not designed to provide for intentional and explicit language development. For other teachers, the data evoke persistent deficit views of what language learners cannot do linguistically until they acquire fluent, accent- or error-free English. To eliminate these challenges, teachers may employ well-intentioned but misinformed strategies such as frontloading isolated vocabulary, assigning uninspired or remedial tasks, and simplifying texts, now made easier with ChatGPT (Bunch, 2024; Nordmeyer & Rojas, 2025; Tavares, 2024; Vallejo & Dooly, 2025; Walqui et al., 2025). Finally, a few teachers relinquish responsibility for the instruction of multilingual learners to collaborating EAL specialists or to multilingual Teaching Assistants. These reductive pedagogical approaches often leave multilingual learners without access to either high-quality content or intentional language development instruction (Nordmeyer & Rojas, 2025; Rojas, 2023; Walqui et al., 2025). 

Opportunity 2: All Teachers are Potential Language Teachers 

As classrooms around the world become increasingly multilingual, teachers in all subject areas face challenges in facilitating the language development of multilingual learners without losing focus on content. Addressing these challenges requires knowledge of the relationship between language and content, as well as pedagogies that incorporate a dual focus on both during subject-matter instruction. To enable all teachers to walk the talk comfortably and confidently, we can shift our thinking to “every teacher is a potential language teacher,” which offers valuable opportunities to institutionalize language-in-education programs, curricula approaches, and instructional practices. The purpose of the remaining discussion is to introduce these opportunities, define key terms and concepts, and illustrate how these approaches offer exciting possibilities. If international schools are to convert the word-action misalignment problem into a word-action opportunity, they need information grounded in research and solutions that are workable in classrooms (de Oliveira, 2020; Harper & Parkin, 2024; Kim et al., 2024; Sembiante et al., 2020; Tavares, 2024).  

Language immersion, a method of learning in which a second language serves as the medium of instruction for subjects such as science, history, or art, has proven successful over many years. Immersion programs vary in the amount of instruction in the second language, ranging from all-day total immersion to partial immersion, which occurs in schools that also teach the national language and culture for part of the school day. The dual-language immersion model integrates English-proficient and English-learning students in the same classroom, aiming to achieve bilingualism for both groups in their respective languages. Any of these options offers a viable alternative to submersion “sink or swim” approaches, where students must learn subject matter and English simultaneously without the benefit of teachers trained to provide structured, supportive learning environments. Submersion results in compensatory programs, such as pull-out or stand-alone English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, intended to help language learners overcome the so-called “language handicap” of not speaking English (Crawford, 1987; Ramírez-Verdugo, M.D., 2024). As educators gradually recognize the benefits of adopted immersion programs, they welcome schoolwide student ownership and the affirmation of their identity as immersion teachers, enabling them to implement language and literacy development across the curriculum (Chen et al., 2022). 

One of the defining characteristics of immersion schooling is the integration of content and language teaching and learning. Many acronyms are used to describe these curricula approaches; three are contrasted here. English-medium instruction (EMI) emphasizes content mastery, treating language learning as an incidental outcome. Instructional methods are at the discretion of content teachers, as is the level of collaboration with language specialists. Students are expected to participate as native English speakers might, and individual teachers may use language-sensitive strategies. Learning objectives and assessments are tied directly to the content and administered only in English (Bradford & Brown, 2017). In contrast, language specialists teach content-based instruction (CBI), drawing on school subjects for topics, texts, and tasks. Content learning expectations focus on conceptual understanding at a general knowledge level, and students are assessed on language proficiency and basic content knowledge in English. Pull-out classes and sheltered content classes are examples of CBI commonly used for multilingual learners not yet proficient in English (Bradford & Brown, 2017). Finally, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) fuses content mastery with explicit, intentional language learning. Content teachers are trained or collaborate with language specialists to align language objectives and use multimodal, interactive, and learner-centered strategies in all language-skill areas. CLIL emphasizes active learning, draws on constructivist and sociocultural principles, and taps into the linguistic resources that multilingual learners already possess through planned translanguaging. Students are assessed on their language performance in expressing subject-matter knowledge as articulated in curriculum goals using their full linguistic repertoires (Bradford & Brown, 2017; Coyle et al., 2010; Rojas, 2023; Tai et al., 2025; van Kampen et al., 2017). 

Let us take a look at a CLIL science lesson where multilingual learners are expected to progress from simple sentences recounting what happened in an experiment to complex, cause-and-effect sentences that explain the results. To help students use more precise scientific language, the science teacher invites an EAL coach to model linguistic scaffolding (Dove et al., 2025). The EAL coach begins with a think-aloud protocol as she shares an authentic scientific explanation. While reading, she justifies her preferred language choices by using examples from the text to show how to deconstruct and construct sentence clauses, combining and recombining simple and complex sentences. Next, she notes the “nuances” of using the different sentences and their impact on meaning and asks students to contrast these nuances in their own languages with translanguaging partners. Students are then strategically placed in small groups to practice combining and recombining sentences for different scientific explanations, providing collaborative opportunities for “talking science” (Buxton et al., 2016, p. 11). The classroom teacher and EAL coach strategically work with groups of students to jointly construct explanations, posting anchor charts on a class Padlet for other groups to view. Later, multilingual learners independently generate complex cause-and-effect statements and justify their choices to provide evidence that they are making linguistic choices based on a scientific rationale, which may or may not be the case when students use sentence starters scripted verbatim (Alvarez, 2023; Soto et al., 2023). Following the EAL coach’s modeling, the classroom teacher creates a five-step CLIL protocol for subsequent lessons, focusing on using specific scaffolds to break down the technical nature of scientific terminology and the use of passive voice (Lyon & Mackura, 2023). 

Consider a group of secondary humanities teachers well-trained in teaching disciplinary literacy, referring to the specialized reading, writing, and communication practices that experts use within their specific academic fields. These teachers are skilled at teaching students specialized vocabulary, text structures, modes of inquiry, and ways of evaluating evidence. The challenge they face is the disconnect between the cultural backgrounds of multilingual learners and the required texts, which often rely on examples and historical references unfamiliar or irrelevant to students’ own cultural experiences. Multilingual learners often misinterpret assumptions presented in texts that take an exclusively Western-centric perspective. The teachers invite the EAL specialist to help them implement the CLIL-related, genre-based pedagogical model known as the Teaching and Learning Cycle (TLC). This approach consists of four phases designed to apprentice multilingual learners in reading and writing the unfamiliar genres they encounter, with the hopes that the inherent scaffolding at each phase can further inform teachers’ instruction (Besser & Westerlund, 2024; Rose, 2017; Schulze & Dougherty, 2023). Additionally, the EAL specialist and the Humanities teachers explore integrating GenAI tools as a resource to augment mentor texts for reading and writing instruction for multilingual learners (de Oliveira & dos Santos, 2025). The Humanities teachers’ consistent use of the CLIL-informed TLC approach, along with the supplemental mentor texts, has galvanizing effects on both students and teachers (Gebhard et al., 2019; Harper & Parkin, 2024; McLean Davies et al., 2022). 

Undoubtedly, some content teachers of multilingual learners are already language teachers, and all content teachers have the potential to be language teachers. Each day, teachers like these science and humanities educators empower the multilingual learners in their classrooms to meet the linguistic challenges of learning in a second language. None of the small, incremental changes discussed here is insignificant. However, international schools can no longer wait for individual teachers to dismantle, disrupt, or at least soften the restrictive boundaries that prevent all teachers from reaching their full potential for immersion and CLIL teaching. The problems created by a lack of understanding of language-in-education programs, curricula approaches, and instructional language practices in international schools require institutional transformation from within. The opportunity to do so is here; after all, where there’s a CLIL, there’s a way. 

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