Developing teacher competences for pluralistic approaches
Training and reflection tools for teachers and teacher educators

A workshop

A major event for the project took place this year: a workshop bringing together professionals from many countries to discuss the development of teacher competences for pluralistic approaches. The workshop took place on 28 and 29 September at the ECML in Graz and brought together the team, 3 associated partners and 36 participants, half of them online. The discussions were rich, and the feedback showed that the tools the team is developing (a reference framework of teacher competences for pluralistic approaches and materials for teacher education) are perceived very positively. They are seen as resources that can contribute to (better) integrating the plural dimensions in teacher education, and thus to promoting plurilingual, intercultural and inclusive education.

Taking as a starting point some of the teaching competences identified by the team for the implementation of pluralistic approaches, the participants engaged in discussions aimed at the production of new materials for teacher education, in particular concerning the competences they consider to be particularly relevant in their contexts.

A network

Since the workshop, the team has been working in parallel on the development of tools for teacher education and the organisation of a network. This network will bring together some of the workshop participants who wish to continue the work started there, as well as other professionals who wish to collaborate on the creation of new resources for the development of teacher competences for pluralistic approaches and in exchanges on the piloting of materials in their contexts.

The next step is the network meeting which will take place on 3 and 4 February 2022. The team is looking forward to this new opportunity to exchange and collaborate with professionals from different countries and contexts.

Brigitte Gerber, coordinator

• ECML project website "Developing teacher competences for pluralistic approaches – Training and reflection tools for teachers and teacher educators" (available in English and French): www.ecml.at/pluralisticteachercompetences

The team’s work, in this very peculiar year, was carried out entirely online. The workshop originally planned for December was postponed to 2021 and the team focused its work on the further development of its tools.

Sequences of tasks and scenarios for teacher education which foster the development of competences for pluralistic approaches

The team is creating examples of sequences of tasks that can be directly used or adapted in initial and further teacher education. These ready-to-use units will also be accompanied by scenarios - generic tools designed to support teacher educators to create their own materials.

Definition of the teaching competences needed for the implementation of plurilingual and intercultural education through pluralistic approaches

Having identified a number of specific teacher competences for pluralistic approaches, we are focusing on their interconnection with the taxonomy produced as part of the project "Guide to teaching competences for languages in education", coordinated by Lukas Bleichenbacher in the 2016-2019 programme. The aim is that the work produced by our team will provide a specific complement for pluralistic approaches that fits clearly into this framework. Having finalized the dimension of principles and professional values specific for pluralistic approaches, we are now working on the formulation and organization of the following dimensions: linguistic and communicative, metalinguistic, metacommunicative and metacultural competences, competences related to the use of information and communication technologies, didactic competences, competences necessary for one’s own development, competences to cooperate with other actors in the educational sphere.

The team has also tested dynamic modes of online presentation of the defined competences in a global and detailed way.

We are thus preparing to share and discuss our work with the participants in the workshop to be held in the autumn of 2021, so that we can benefit from feedback on the use they could make of it in their contexts and set up a network that will be involved in the following reflections and productions and in the dissemination of the project.

Brigitte Gerber, project coordinator

• ECML project website "Developing teacher competences for pluralistic approaches – Training and reflection tools for teachers and teacher educators" (available in English and French) : www.ecml.at/pluralisticteachercompetences

What are the teaching competences needed to develop plurilingual and intercultural education through pluralistic approaches? How can they be developed?

These are the questions that the project team is currently working on, with the aim of developing tools for teachers and teacher educators in pre-service or in-service education, as well as for designers of teacher education programmes. The team met online to take stock of the work that has already been accomplished and to further develop it. Starting from a compilation of competency frameworks for teacher education, we are focusing on specific competences for pluralistic approaches (cf. FREPA) and with the aim of organising them in an easily accessible structure. We are also creating other specific tools for the development of these competences:

• scenarios offering structures to be used by teacher educators or curricula designers to build their own teacher education modules;
• teacher education sequences that can be used directly in initial or continuing training or adapted.

More advanced versions of this work will be discussed in a workshop in which participants will be invited to experiment, analyse and give feedback on the potential use of these tools for teacher education in their contexts.

B. Gerber

• Project team: Ana-Isabel Andrade, Brigitte Gerber (coordinator), Anna Schröder-Sura, Monica Vlad.
  Associate partner: Michel Candelier.
  
  
• ECML web pages dedicated to the project "Developing teacher competences for pluralistic approaches – Training and reflection tools for teachers and teacher educators" (available in English and French) : www.ecml.at/pluralisticteachercompetences