Development of CDC-based teaching materials in language education
The participants of the DECODE network meeting that was held in Graz on 24-25 June 2025, were so inspired and motivated by the project that they continued to be involved through their autonomous group work on developing CDC-based teaching materials in language education. Each of the groups arranged 2-4 virtual meetings, during which the participants refined their ideas and finalised their activities.
In Picture 1, you can see the members of a very creative and hard-working group: Melita Lemut Bajec, Jeanine Hennessy, Magdalena Pic and Tu Anh Ha, holding one such meeting. During this online collaboration moderated by the DECODE project team member, Emina Jelešković, they developed several great activities for the project.
Picture 1: © Emina Jelešković / Source: Online meeting attended by Emina Jelešković, Melita Lemut Bajec, Jeanine Hennessy, Tu Anh Ha and Magdalena Pic
Another group of innovative and productive teacher educators – Thomais Rousoulioti, Alma Žero, Laura Stenman and Jeanine Hennessy – arranged a series of online sessions in which, apart from designing CDC-based teaching materials, they discussed their further collaboration.
Picture 2: © Alma Žero / Source: Online meeting attended by Thomais Rousoulioti, Alma Žero, Jeanine Hennessy and Laura Stenman
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The DECODE team was also impressed by the efforts of an enthusiastic and prolific tandem of Melita Lemut Bajec and Mateja Dagarin Fojkar from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, who created three more activities in addition to those produced in their working groups.
Notably, all other participants made considerable efforts within their groups in designing CDC-based activities, which are being added to the bank of project teaching materials.
Along with that, a member of the DECODE project team, Anna Shemaeva, was kindly invited by her PhD supervisor, María Elena Gómez-Parra, to deliver a seminar entitled “Fostering competences for democratic culture in young learners through language education” to a group of her fourth-year students in the Primary Education programme at the University of Cordoba, Spain.
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This seminar offered attendees an opportunity to learn about the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) and explore why and how to teach CDC in the language classroom. It also introduced the DECODE project – its goals and expected outputs, and the template proposed by the project team. In addition, group work was arranged for the pre-service teachers to put their new knowledge into practice and create CDC-based activities in language education following the DECODE template. Having worked on the assignment outside the classroom during the following week, each of the nine groups submitted high-quality activities, and some of these will be implemented in the DECODE project.
Teaching materials produced by all contributors are in the process of being reviewed by the DECODE project team and then forwarded to the ECML programme consultant Chantal Muller for further evaluation. This will be followed by feedback which will lead to the formation of the first set of the CDC teaching materials in language education.
Picture 3: © Anna Shemaeva / Source: Seminar “Fostering competences for democratic culture in young learners through language education” at the University of Cordoba, Spain
If you would like to explore developing competences for democratic culture through language education further, the resources below are a good place to start.
Further reading
- “Developing competences for democratic culture for young learners through language education” (DECODE) – ECML project page in English, German, and French: www.ecml.at/decode.
- Council of Europe (2018), Reference framework of competences for democratic culture (3 volumes), Council of Europe, Strasbourg, available at www.coe.int/en/web/reference-framework-of-competences-for-democratic-culture/rfcdc-volumes.
- Council of Europe (2020), Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment – Companion volume, Strasbourg, available at www.coe.int/lang-cefr.
- Council of Europe (2021), Descriptors of competences for democratic culture for young learners, Strasbourg, available at link.
- Council of Europe (2022), Recommendation on the importance of plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic culture, Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)1 adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 2 February 2022 and explanatory memorandum, available at link.