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Mediation in teaching, learning and assessment

This project sets out to develop a teaching guide for foreign language teachers of primary and secondary education who want to include cross-linguistic mediation in their pedagogical practices. This will contain information about the theory and practice of teaching, learning and assessing mediation together with examples of mediation tasks in different languages, which draw on the Companion Volume of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). A digital database, which will include tasks suitable for various educational environments, will also be produced.

Working languages of the project: English, French
Project term: 2020-2021
Shortcut: www.ecml.at/mediation

Main idea and objectives

This project sets out to develop guidelines useful for language teachers who want to include the linguistic mediation aspect in their classrooms. The goal is to familiarise teachers with a language pedagogy that will allow them to function “as agents of multilingualism in Europe” (Ziegler 2013) and to help them gain knowledge into how to develop and assess their students’ mediation skills.

Mediation, with which this project is concerned, as part of someone's plurilingual competence is an aspect in teacher education not yet touched upon. As highlighted by a study by Zeigler (2013) plurilingualism has become a mode of living on the one hand but is still in its infancy from a methodological and applied viewpoint. As stated in her study relating to the need for foreign language teachers to be trained in plurilingual methodology “language teachers faced with the challenge of multilingualism and plurilingual repertoires can no longer draw on single resources like bringing in materials in a given language or from experienced multilingual practices (e.g., Erasmus exchange)” (Ziegler, 2013 drawing upon Goodman 2009). More than in the past, language teachers have to integrate language resources of multiple kinds. This project draws upon inclusive and pluralistic approaches to education – main priorities of the European Centre for Modern Languages - where the development of linguistic and intercultural competences play a key role.

Language teachers will hopefully become able to adopt new teaching methods in today's multilingual classrooms focusing on languages as resources rather than on languages as systems to be taught thus facilitating a shift from monolingualism to multilingualism.

Target groups

Teachers
Teacher educators
School leaders
Policy-makers and curriculum planners
Those responsible for foreign language teacher training programmes
Material developers
School inspectors/advisors
Teacher associations

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Envisaged project results

The teaching guide to be produced will contain information about

what mediation entails,
how it can be implemented,
types of mediation tasks.

It will provide guided practice for the development of teaching and testing tasks for cross-linguistic mediation drawing upon the CEFR Companion Volume with New Descriptors of mediation (Council of Europe, 2018).

A digital database which will contain activities and tasks to be used in different educational environments as well as digital materials and further references relevant to cross-linguistic mediation will also be produced.

Using the work carried out so far by the Council of Europe as reference and as a base on which to expand the European vision of changing the language teaching paradigm to a more open and inclusive approach, this project will also entail a series of webinars focusing on providing further guidelines to participants as to how to teach and assess mediation. The webinars towards the end of the project will become available to teachers, teacher trainers, material developers, and syllabus designers. In this way, the project will attempt to exploit, as recommended by the European Commission, the transformational benefits of ICTs and other new technologies to “enrich teaching, improve learning experiences, support personalized learning, facilitate access through distance learning, and create new opportunities for the collaboration across cultural borders” (European Commission, 2011: 5)

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Latest articles

29.09.2021
MultiLEAP Webinar – Languages Across Borders, Within the classroom: Mediation in Teaching, Learning and Assessment (7 October at 13.30-15.00)

Welcome to MultiLEAP Webinar on 7.10. at 13.30-15.00!

Please share this invitation within your networks! Students are also welcome!

What: MultiLEAP Webinar – Languages Across Borders, Within the classroom: Mediation in Teaching, Learning and Assessment (ME.T.L.A.)
When: Thursday 7th of October 2021, at 13.30–15.00
Where: http://r.jyu.fi/multileap-07-10-21

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Welcome to hear an interesting presentation about the concept of cross-linguistic mediation in the foreign language classroom. More than in the past, language teachers have to integrate language resources of multiple kinds. This project draws upon inclusive and pluralistic approaches to education – main priorities of the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) - where the development of linguistic and intercultural competences play a key role. Our guests represent the ECML project “Mediation in Teaching, Learning and Assessment” (ME.T.L.A.). The goal of the ME.T.L.A. project is to create a hands-on Teaching Guide on cross-linguistic mediation for primary and secondary language teachers and a digital database which will contain activities and tasks to be used in different educational environments.

Programme:

Welcome and introduction
What is cross-linguistic mediation?
Cross-linguistic mediation in the ME.T.L.A project
Examples of cross-linguistic mediation activities in the classroom
Discussion
Closing of the webinar

Our guests:

Dr Maria Stathopoulou is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Hellenic Open University and at the National Technical University of Athens. Since 2007, she has been a Research Fellow at the RCeL, University of Athens and a member of the English team preparing the national exams for the Greek State Certificate of Foreign Language Competence (known as KPG exams).
From 2014-2017, she was a member of the authoring group of experts of the Council of Europe concerning the update of the CEFR. Recently (2020-2021), her project “Mediation in Τeaching, Learning and Assessment” (ME.T.L.A.) is being funded by the European Centre of Modern Languages (ECML) of the Council of Europe (2020-2023). Dr Stathopoulou’s book “Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing” (2015) has been published by Multilingual Matters. Her second book concerns the teaching of ESP in academic contexts.

Magdalini Liontou works as an ESP university teacher at the Languages and Communication, University of Oulu and she is a PhD researcher focusing on language assessment at the University of Jyväskylä. She is interested in the cultural perspective of assessment, language mediation and inclusive pedagogy. She has also co-authored the book “Scientific Communication in English” for an ESP course taught at Nanjing Institute of Technology (China). Currently, she is the communication member in the “Mediation in Teaching, Learning and Assessment” (ME.T.L.A.) project at the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) regarding cross-linguistic mediation.

Looking forward seeing you on Thursday 7 October at 13.30 am!
http://r.jyu.fi/multileap-07-10-21

***

Save the date already for the next MultiLEAP Webinar: Friday October 29 at 10.00!

The aim of MultiLEAP is to strengthen multidisciplinary research, collaborate within the faculties and enhance professional development of staff. MultiLEAP focuses on the wide array of skills, or multiliteracies, needed across the lifespan in the 21st century in working life, education, and home. The core themes of MultiLEAP are participation, access, equity, agency, and well-being. MultiLEAP supports research, for example, by organising thematic events and by providing funding.

Read more: jyu.fi/multileap

Do you want to organise a MultiLEAP Webinar as a guest host? Send an email to multileap@jyu.fi

04.12.2020
The METLA Project: first year activities, experiences and challenges

What has the project achieved this year?

During the first year of this two-year project, the METLA team focused on the development of the Teaching Guide which can help teachers incorporate cross-lingual mediation in their teaching practices and classrooms. The METLA team has worked hard in order to:

a) design a set of cross-linguistic mediation tasks on the basis of a specially designed template;

b) collect material for these mediation tasks (texts, photographs, videos, audios etc.);

c) develop tools for the evaluation of the tasks by experts and teachers/practitioners; and

d) find potential educators who would like to pilot the cross-linguistic tasks.

What activities and events were carried out?

Three big events took place (2 expert meetings and 1 network meeting) while a series of informal expert online meetings (6 in total) during this first year helped the team to develop bonds and learn how to work together. As a result of a fruitful collaboration, the team has already prepared 20 mediation tasks involving different languages (English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Maltese, Portuguese, and Spanish, among others). By mid-January 2021, METLA tasks will have been piloted in real classrooms and some additional versions of tasks including more languages will also be produced. These tasks will accompany the Teaching Guide and add to it a very important practical dimension. The team has also participated in numerous online teacher training events and conferences around Europe in order to present the project and disseminate this work. Many teachers around Europe are now willing to participate in our future activities!

What were the challenges?

A big challenge is working on such a demanding project with team members from different countries without having physically met once. The team managed to build strong relationships and adapted very well given the trying circumstances we all face, both personally and academically. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, dissemination of the information has also been challenging, since some of the conferences we targeted had our abstracts accepted, but then had to be postponed. Piloting the activities has also been a challenge since most of the teachers have started teaching online and they find that learning about this mode of teaching has taken most of their preparation time.

How did target audience react?

On a positive note, we feel that those challenges have made us work harder and focus on maximizing our productivity. We are a highly motivated team and we strongly believe in this project. The collaboration between the team members and several stakeholders has added a multifaceted aspect to this project and we feel privileged to be able to conduct this work. The excellent reception of the project among the target audience was beyond our expectations and this further encourages us to look forward to the coming year with enthusiasm and optimism.

Maria Stathopoulou, project coordinator

Visit the project website (available in English and French): www.ecml.at/mediation
Join the METLA Facebook Group

06.10.2020
"Mediation in teaching, learning and assessment": The METLA project ... on its way

This ECML project "Mediation in teaching, learning and assessment" sets out to develop a teaching guide for foreign language teachers of primary and secondary education who want to include cross-lingual mediation in their classrooms. Teachers will gain awareness of how to develop tasks which will incorporate more than one language (e.g. foreign language + mother tongue + other languages). These mediation tasks will aim not only at making learners competent in using the target language, but they will also raise learners’ awareness of the importance of language alternation.

Moving away from the traditional way of teaching and learning, this guide suggests a plurilingual approach to the teaching of languages. Specifically, it will contain information about the theory and practice of language teaching, learning and assessing mediation together with examples of mediation tasks in different languages. The examples of mediation tasks will draw upon the new descriptors of the Companion Volume of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (CEFR-CV).

The key points of the METLA Teaching Guide are:

theory and practice of cross-linguistic mediation for the development of plurilingual competence;
the CEFR-CV performance descriptors of mediation and how they related to learning and assessment tasks;
guidelines for the alignment of mediation tasks with CEFR CV descriptors;
guidelines for designing oral, written and multimodal mediation tasks with examples;
guidelines for assessing and testing mediation performance.

Cross-lingual mediation activities which ask for the parallel use of languages in the classroom can be used to soften linguistic and cultural barriers. The benefits of such fluid language practices in the foreign language classroom are many, the challenges as well!

Dr Maria Stathopoulou, Coordinator

Visit the project website (available in English and French): www.ecml.at/mediation
Join the METLA Facebook Group

15.04.2020
Mediation in teaching, learning and assessment: A teaching guide for language educators

Mediation is both an old and a new component in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Old, since it was included as a notion when the Framework was first published in 2001 and where it was declared an important ability. However, it was not complemented with descriptive descriptors (can-do statements) compared with other abilities – reception, production and interaction. The term is also considered new because the CEFR Companion Volume with new Mediation Descriptors was published in 2018. This important document becomes useful in softening borders between languages, ideologies, identities and in bridging linguistic gaps. Within this new context, the incorporation of translingual practices in the foreign language curriculum and classroom is essential, and at the same time teachers need to be trained in order to reinforce links between their students’ languages.

Our project, which has just begun, intends to develop a Teaching Guide for foreign language teachers (of primary and secondary education) who want to include linguistic mediation involving different languages in their classrooms. This guide will contain the following information:

what mediation entails,
how it can be implemented,
types of mediation tasks and
the theory and practice of teaching and assessing mediation.

Examples of mediation tasks for all proficiency levels combining different languages will also be included. The second output of this project will be the production of a digital Repository, a database, which will include mediation tasks for various educational environments, as well as digital materials and further references relevant to mediation.

This project draws upon pluralistic approaches to education where the development of interlinguistic and intercultural competences plays a key role. Its ultimate aim is to help teachers gain knowledge on how to develop and assess their students’ mediation skills. The challenge for teachers will be to embrace and creatively exploit the resources produced as a result of this project!

Dr Maria Stathopoulou, project coordinator

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Feel free to follow the project developments on the dedicated ECML website which is available in English and French: www.ecml.at/mediation.

"Mediation in teaching, learning and assessement" is one of the 9 new projects of the ECML's programme "Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences" (2020-2023).