Latest news items
07.05.2020
The future of language education in Europe: case studies of innovative practices
The Network of Experts working on the Social Dimension of Education and Training (NESET), one of the seven official knowledge providers of European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC), has recently published a new analytical report, titled ‘The future of language education in Europe: case studies of innovative practices’.
The main purpose of this report is to explore emerging innovative approaches and strategies of language teaching in Europe supporting learners’ plurilingualism, inspire educators and policy makers to innovate and implement forward-looking policies and practices in language education, and contribute to the implementation of the EU Council Recommendation on a comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of languages (adopted in May 2019).
The publication also refers to the work of the Council of Europe’s European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) and highlights 8 projects and tools promoting plurilingual pedagogies (see pp. 4, 36, 37, 40, 61, 88, 114, 118, 128):
You can access the full report (English) and executive summaries (English, French and German) on the website nesetweb.eu.
23.04.2020
World Book Day (23 April): explore the digital collection of the ECML!
03.04.2020
TraCo has launched! “Developing transversal competences in language education (TraCo)”
Cutting edge knowledge and skills, also termed Transversal competences, are necessary for the future of young people who need to be able to act in digitalised environments, learn new ways to work, be involved as active citizens and encounter people with a variety of cultures and linguistic backgrounds, just to name a few transversal competences. All these challenges can be turned into sources of joy, if languages are naturally integrated with other subjects at school.
Our project “TraCo - Developing transversal competences in language education” will soon provide language teachers and their colleagues with an opportunity to share their ideas and experience in working with transversal competences at upper secondary education. We start from Finland, Germany, France and Luxembourg, but in the four project years to come, teachers and students in many more countries will be invited to join us in piloting and implementing ideas, collaborating and experiencing the true pleasure of gaining new knowledge and skills, as well as sensing a community spirit across disciplines and borders.
Raili Hildén, project coordinator
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“Developing transversal competences in language education” is one of the 9 new projects of the ECML's programme "Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences" (2020-2023).
This project will develop an action-oriented scenario-based framework for the implementation and documentation of language-related, cross-disciplinary approaches in upper secondary education and foreign language teacher education. The “vignettes” or cases for the scenarios will be of a multimodal character and might be used for learning/teaching arrangements (including tele-collaborations) as well as for self-regulated portfolio work. A digital multimodal portfolio template with learning analytic potential will also be designed and piloted by a transnational, multi-professional “community of practice”. Although the shared project languages are English and German, the project team covers French, Spanish and Swedish as well, which promises a multilingual approach and output.
- TraCo presented by the project coordinator: video in English (2:33 min.)
- The TraCo project website is available in English and German at
www.ecml.at/transversalcompetences