Teacher and learner competences

As the first full year of the ECML project Pluriwell came to a close, the participants held an online meeting to continue their collaboration, share their ideas and celebrate their progress. Over 30 participants from all over Europe joined the event via video chat on 16 December 2024. The meeting was an opportunity for Pluriwell teachers to reconnect, look back at what the network has accomplished in 2024 and look ahead to the coming year.

Pluriwell teachers around Europe have been collaborating with a view to creating tools designed to increase teachers’ plurilingual wellbeing. The meeting offered a space for participants to compare notes about this work in progress. Teachers were able to exchange impressions about how their colleagues and schools have responded to Pluriwell’s ideas about plurilingual wellbeing and to compare the issues that have emerged as they have explored their colleagues’ experiences and attitudes in different contexts.

The fact that the meeting attracted such a large number of attendees from the participating schools reflects the continued strength of the project network as Pluriwell enters its second year and a new phase of work on the plurilingual wellbeing of teachers. Many of the attendees had already attended the initial network meeting in Graz in October, and were joined by colleagues who have been taking part in Pluriwell remotely. Attendees connected from several countries including Spain, France, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, Montenegro and Czechia.

Caterina Sugranyes (project coordinator), Latisha Mary, Gerit Jaritz, Karen Aarøe

• ECML project website “Fostering the plurilingual wellbeing of language teachers” (2024-26) (available in English and French) : www.ecml.at/pluriwell
• See also “Recent developments”

The ECML project “Using ECML resources for plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic culture” recently held a two-day network meeting with 13 experts from across Europe to evaluate the project tools being developed. The meeting, designed to enhance the adaptation of ECML resources, provided a platform for dynamic discussions and insightful feedback from participants.

Sessions began with an overview of key documents, including the Council of Europe recommendation and the Competences for Democratic Culture Framework. This was followed by explorations of strategies for localising ECML resources. A significant highlight was the introduction of the adaptation grid and checklist, key tools designed to support educators and policymakers in aligning existing resources with their specific needs. 

The second day focused on group work to improve the adaptation framework, brainstorming ways to integrate and search for resources in the ECML database. Feedback emphasised the need for establishing clear links between plurilingual education and democratic culture and identified challenges in adapting resources to local contexts. Several suggestions for adjusting the presented tools were discussed, including exploring the power of AI as a search engine, and developing structured scenarios for different levels of the adaptation.

The meeting underlined the project's commitment to inclusivity and flexibility in resource use. Follow-up actions include refining tools, addressing participants' concerns, and supporting the practical application of ECML resources in diverse educational contexts. Stay tuned for more updates!

Kenia Puig, Miranda Karjagdi Çolak, Eva Vetter, Nermina Wikström 

• A new Council of Europe Recommendation on the importance of plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic culture 
• Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC)

• ECML project website “Using ECML resources for plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic culture” (2024-26) (available in English and German) : www.ecml.at/arpide

Since the beginning of 2024, the AI for language education (AILang) project has been actively engaged in exploring and documenting how language teachers use AI tools to support teaching and learning. 

In our kick-off expert meeting, which took place on 18 and 19 March, the project team developed a multilingual questionnaire to map how AI is being used across national settings, what affordances teachers are aware of, and what apprehensions they have regarding the effective and ethical use of AI in language education. This survey has now been completed, and we would like to thank all participants for their time and insights. The initial findings of the survey suggest that AI resources were widely used: over half the respondents reported having used AI tools to create materials, organise lesson plans, teach all language skills and improve students’ vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Some examples they provided included: 

• generating text for classroom use
•  creating comprehension questions for reading or listening exercises
• creating different versions of learning and assessment tasks
• rephrasing instructions (e.g., “This helps me to have a different perspective on what I write”) 
• generating images that correspond to a description or text

That said, many teachers reported challenges in prompt generation, finding ways to integrate creativity into AI-assisted language education, and avoiding plagiarism. Concerns were also raised about training and the cost of AI tools. The teachers also reported fears regarding being replaced, or language education becoming obsolete, as well as the perceived decline in students’ production skills.

Based on the findings from this survey, the AILang team is currently working on developing resources that can help educate teachers about AI-assisted language education. To that end, we have been experimenting with various AI resources (e.g., CoPilot, ChatGTP, Claude, DeepL, Diff.it, etc.)  and exploring their potential and limitations. Our insights are used to produce teacher education materials that can help to: 

• familiarise teachers with AI resources and encourage them to experiment with them 
• develop their capacity to meaningfully integrate multiple AI tools into their teaching 
• encourage reflection on the pedagogically effective and ethical use of AI technology in language education. 

An online learning space has already been created to host these learning resources, and we are currently in the process of populating it with resources. 

We also organised an online event for teachers to exchange ideas and good practices regarding the use of AI in their language classrooms. Our first BarCamp event, on 5 November 2024, brought together teachers from Armenia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia and Sweden. In the focused discussions that took place participants shared their insights from the use of AI tools, presented innovative teaching ideas, discussed difficulties they have faced, and received peer feedback on their ideas and practices. We are in the process of analysing the insights from the BarCamp and will follow up with more information about it shortly.

Further ahead, we are also looking forward to our next international workshop, which will take place in Graz in November 2025. This will be an opportunity to present our ongoing work and discuss how it can be made more useful for language educators in diverse settings. If you are interested in participating, you can follow this space (www.ecml.at/AI-lang)  for updates, and liaise with the National Nominating Authorities in your country for details.  

Despite being launched just this year, the AILang project has already made considerable strides in understanding the current applications of AI in language education. These initial achievements mark only the beginning of the project's broader goals. Looking ahead, AILang is poised to launch new initiatives aimed at empowering educators with AI-driven tools and insights, transforming the future of language learning. 

Merilyn Meristo, coordinator of AILang

• ECML project website “AI for language education” (2024-27) (available in English and French) : www.ecml.at/AI-lang