The relevance of school self-concept and creativity for CLIL outreach learning

Abstract

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) combined with experimental outreach learning activities may affect the inherently correlated constructs creativity and self-concept. Evaluation of our one-day CLIL genetics laboratory confirms this correlation for both Biology (p < .001, r = 0.739) and English (p < .001, r = 0.802) after participation with excellent model-fit parameters. Participation did not produce any gender differences except for the latent variable Social of the self-concept scale. Moreover, self-concept correlates with short- and long-term cognitive achievement and long-term linguistic knowledge, confirming the mutually reinforcing relationship between self-concept and academic achievement. For Biology and English grades, negative correlations with self-concept indicate that our module provides effective support for low achievers. Combined with an overall positive correlation between the latent constructs creativity and self-concept and long-term cognitive achievement, our results indicate that creativity-enhancing interventions could increase the self-concept and may, accordingly, lead to better performance at school.