Elementary Teachers’ Scaffolding Strategies for Multicultural KSL Students in CLIL Classrooms in South Korea

As South Korea’s multicultural student population grows, the need for effective support strategies in linguistically diverse classrooms has become urgent. This study investigates how elementary content teachers scaffold language and content learning for multicultural students who speak Korean as a second language (KSL) in CLIL classrooms. Drawing on classroom observations and stimulated recall interviews at a highly diverse elementary school, the research identifies frequent language-related episodes (LREs) initiated by teachers—most often reactively, in response to the immediate vocabulary and pronunciation challenges of students. Grammar-focused scaffolding was observed predominantly in mathematics, reflecting the unique linguistic demands of disciplinary subjects. Teachers reported significant challenges in supporting KSL students’ academic Korean development, and highlighted a strong need for targeted professional development in integrating language and content instruction. The findings point to the limitations of incidental scaffolding alone and underscore the necessity of systematic support and training for teachers. The limitations of the study include its focus on a single school and teacher perspective, as well as reliance on audio rather than multimodal data. This research provides implications for policy and practice, emphasizing the urgent need for systemic approaches to CLIL and disciplinary literacy in the context of South Korea’s increasingly multicultural educational context.