Sustaining Content and Language Integrated Learning in China: A Systematic Review

The past decades have witnessed the rise and boom of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). As this dual-focused pedagogical approach continues to grow with remarkable vitality and sustainability, however, there is a paucity of knowledge regarding its development and application in China, necessitating a systematic review of previous research to apprise the academia of what has been done in the education and research agenda of CLIL. Grounded in four databases (i.e., Web of Science, Scopus, Education Resources Information Center, and Google Scholar), 28 research articles were extracted from 2013 to 2022 with certain exclusion and inclusion criteria considered. Thematic analyses primarily demonstrated that: (1) most studies were conducted in higher education providers, with English being the predominant instructional language; (2) diverse subject matters were embraced, denoting the coordination of “self” and “other” intercultural identities; (3) affective evidence concerning perceptions of CLIL and performance evidence regarding language learning outcomes tended to be the research nuclei, de-emphasizing the other research topics (e.g., assessment, translanguaging, heterogeneity in learning, learning materials, learning process); (4) the research findings were various, with most of them corroborating the benefits of CLIL to different aspects of learning; (5) CLIL learners were the principal source of data, and diverse research paradigms were displayed with appropriate designs as per the research objectives. These findings, by comparison with the knowledge and experience obtained from the Western world, imply that the scope of the CLIL agenda should be extended and deepened in China, encouraging educators and researchers to consider and probe a wider range of issues of interest.