Teaching, learning and scaffolding in CLIL science classrooms INTRODUCTION

This Special Issue presents a collection of empirical studies examining the teaching and learning processes in science classrooms in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts. It is a timely contribution to the rapidly growing body of CLIL research in response to scholars' consistent calls for more classroom-based research on the issues in integration of content and language teaching in lessons (Cenoz, Genesee, & Gorter, 2014; Nikula, Dalton-Puffer, Llinares, & Lorenzo, 2016). Although this journal is dedicated to immersion and content-based language education programmes, we still feel the need to outline the key constructs in this Special Issue, namely CLIL, science learning and scaffolding, in order to help readers understand the central theme of this Special Issue and the connection of the various papers in this issue. © John Benjamins Publishing Company