Teresa Connolly argues that a profound understanding of key chemistry concepts and processes is as fundamental to scientific literacy as mastering complex procedures and skills, such as performing experiments, interpreting data or communicating one’s findings using specific text types. However, she points out that such an understanding of chemical concepts is inhibited not only by learners’ poor command of academic language but also by the fact that chemical processes can be observed at different levels of abstraction. This poses a specific challenge in chemistry because learners often report having difficulties distinguishing clearly between processes at the sub-microscopic, the microscopic and the macroscopic level, which will lead to misconceptions and prevent deeper understanding. To address that issue, Connolly’s deeper learning episode on redox reactions offers engaging ways of promoting scientific reasoning through a series of student-led experiments and inquiry. Systematic guidance in academic language use will enable learners to express their findings and observations precisely and adequately and thus help them distinguish the processes occurring at various levels of abstraction with increasing ease and confidence.

Frederic Taveau makes a strong argument for reconceptualising modern languages – in this case French – as a subject discipline, with knowledge domains and pathways that explore alternative ways of learning and using language with beginner or near-beginner students. By foregrounding textual fluency, he challenges more traditional approaches to language learning that emphasise linguistic systems. Instead, he focuses on the use of multimodal literary texts to promote meaning-making and language learning through deepening learners’ critical and cultural awareness of relevant, motivating real-world phenomena. Taveau outlines the processes involved in enabling novice learners of French to become more self-confident and self-directed creative literary writers using language in unprecedented ways. Through a series of scaffolded text-centred learning episodes, learners are guided through pluriliteracies-based steps, increasingly using cognitive discourse functions creatively and confidently (explaining, describing, classifying, arguing and evaluating) to construct their own descriptive literary texts on a Gothic theme. These texts are ‘owned’ by students, demonstrating language learning as a creative, motivating means to understanding their world and that of others.

This chapter focuses on current thinking around the concept of pluriliteracies as an ‘ecological growth model’ for learning and its potential for enriching classrooms into sites of deeper integrated learning. This resonates with more recent interest in the role of literacies in the field of CLIL pedagogy, which, according to Morton (2018: 56), ‘adds a focus on subject-specific literacy to that of content and language’. Dalton-Puffer (2014) suggests that given the wide range of theoretical perspectives associated with bilingual learning, there is a need to openly address ‘objectively unresolvable debates’. However although such positive positioning moves thinking forward, it is not enough. Instead, Van Lier (2010) advocates a more ecological perspective to overcome conflicts between theoretical positioning and practical positioning. The chapter explores ways in which pluriliteracies can be embedded in learner-driven pedagogies, which are socially inclusive and potentially transformative and redefine ‘successful learning’, across the curriculum.