Please note: These definitions relate to this specific resource. The same terms may be defined differently in other contexts.
compassion (self-compassion, other-compassion)
Compassion, as Goetz et al. (2010: 351) describe, is «the feeling that arises when witnessing another’s suffering and that motivate a subsequent desire to help». This sentiment is closely linked to a sense of interconnectedness with others, which is fundamental to the concept of compassion.
Neff (2023) underscores the importance of self-compassion in forming deep connections with others, stating: «Far from being selfish, giving oneself compassion provides the emotional resources needed to care for others» (Neff 2023: 203). The author also draws attention to the relationship between self-compassion, a growth mindset, self-efficacy, as well as mental health benefits, suggesting that self-compassion can offer resilience in the face of anxiety or depression. Moreover, Neff (2023) points out that self-compassion can be taught and developed.
Term in French:
compassion (auto-compassion, compassion pour les autres)
La compassion, telle que décrite par Goetz et al. (2010, p.6nbsp;351), est « le sentiment qui émerge en étant témoin de la souffrance d’autrui et qui motive un désir d’aider en conséquence ». Ce sentiment est étroitement lié à un sentiment d’interconnexion avec autrui, qui constitue un élément fondamental du concept de compassion.
Neff (2023) souligne l’importance de l’auto-compassion dans la construction de liens profonds avec les autres, affirmant que « loin d’être égoïste, s’accorder de la compassion à soi-même procure les ressources émotionnelles nécessaires pour prendre soin des autres » (Neff, 2023, p. 203). L’auteure met également en évidence la relation entre l’auto-compassion, un état d’esprit axé sur le développement (growth mindset), l’auto-efficacité, ainsi que les bénéfices pour la santé mentale, suggérant que l’auto-compassion peut renforcer la résilience face à l’anxiété ou à la dépression. De plus, Neff (2023) souligne que l’auto-compassion peut être enseignée et développée.
deeper learning
“Deeper learning is the ability to take what was learned in one situation and apply it to another situation. Through deeper learning (which often involves shared learning and interaction with others in a community), our students develop expertise in a particular subject and they master the unique ways of the subject.” (Pellegrino & Hilton 2012)
Term in French:
apprentissage approfondi
« L’apprentissage approfondi est la capacité de prendre ce qui a été appris dans une situation et de l’appliquer à une autre situation. Grâce à l’apprentissage approfondi (qui implique souvent l’apprentissage partagé et l’interaction avec d’autres personnes au sein d’une communauté), nos élèves développent une expertise dans un domaine particulier et maîtrisent les méthodes uniques de ce domaine. » (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012).
democratic citizenship
Democratic citizenship is about greater participation, social cohesion, access, equity and solidarity. Democratic citizenship is about inclusion rather than exclusion, participation rather than marginalisation, culture and values rather than simple procedural issues (such as voting) and is about being active in shaping understandings and practices of citizenship.
In terms of education for democratic citizenship, it is:
“All those practices and activities aimed at making young people and adults better equipped to participate actively in democratic life by assuming and exercising their rights and responsibilities in society” (Forrester 1999).
“Education for democratic citizenship focuses primarily on democratic rights and responsibilities and active participation, in relation to the civic, political, social, economic, legal and cultural spheres of society, while human rights education is concerned with the broader spectrum of human rights and fundamental freedoms in every aspect of people’s lives.” (
Council of Europe)
Council of Europe, “What is EDC/HRE”, Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (EDC/HRE), available at:
www.coe.int/en/web/edc/what-is-edc/hre, accessed 8 April 2026.
Forrester K. (1999), Guidelines for a site report, DECS/EDU/CIT (99)6, in Starkey H. (2002), Democratic citizenship, languages, diversity and human rights: Guide for the development of Language Education Policies in Europe – From Linguistic Diversity to Plurilingual Education, Reference study, Strasbourg, p. 8, available at:
https://rm.coe.int/democratic-citizenship-languages-diversity-and-human-rights/1680887833, accessed 8 April 2026.
disciplinary literacies
“literacy skills specialized to history, science, mathematics, literature or other subject matter” (Shanahan & Shanahan 2008). Also called secondary literacy.
Shanahan T & Shanahan, C. (2008), “Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy”, Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 78/1, pp. 40-59.
disciplinary literacy
“Disciplinary literacy moves beyond content literacy (common reading and writing strategies used across all content areas) and focuses on the unique aspects of specialized texts, forms of writing, and modes of inquiry that experts use in an academic discipline.”
(Sedita 2024)
Term in French:
littératie disciplinaire
« La littératie disciplinaire va au-delà de la littératie du contenu (les stratégies de lecture et d’écriture courantes utilisées dans toutes les disciplines) et se concentre sur les aspects uniques des textes spécialisés, les formes d’écriture et les modes d’enquête que les experts utilisent dans une discipline académique. »
(Sedita, 2024)
empathy
“... the willingness to step out of one’s usual way of feeling, reasoning and talking about things and enter ‘someone else’s problem’ and to understand what makes it a ‘problem’ in the first place.” (Kramsch 2022: 33)
Term in French:
empathie
« … la volonté de sortir de sa manière habituelle de ressentir, de raisonner et de parler des choses pour entrer dans “le problème de quelqu’un d’autre” et comprendre ce qui en fait un “problème” en premier lieu. » (Kramsch, 2022: 33)
fluency
a) Textual fluency (+ mode continuum, translanguaging):
Communication is increasingly plurimodal or hybrid in nature and reliant on multiple analogue and digital channels of communication and semiotic systems. Being able to critically evaluate sources is key to democratic citizenship and will prepare young learners for the world they will
inhabit through understanding the need for social justice democratic cultural competence. Therefore, being pluriliterate also entails the ability to critically evaluate and produce a wide variety of plurimodal texts and text types.
(Coyle & Meyer 2021: 41)
b) Epistemic fluency:
“...the potential of intertextuality rests on the learners’ ability to successfully navigate, relate, argue, bridge, or agree to disagree with the epistemological positions represented by or which inform those texts to avoid epistemological conflicts and misunderstandings (Brister, 2017). We call this epistemic fluency.”
(Meyer & Coyle: 23)
Term in French:
fluence
a) Fluence textuelle :
La communication est de plus en plus plurimodale ou hybride par nature et repose sur de multiples canaux de communication analogiques et numériques ainsi que sur divers systèmes sémiotiques. La capacité à évaluer de manière critique les sources est essentielle à la citoyenneté démocratique et préparera les jeunes apprenants au monde qu’ils habiteront, en leur permettant de comprendre l’importance de la justice sociale et de la compétence culturelle démocratique. Ainsi, être plurilittéré implique également la capacité d’évaluer de manière critique et de produire une grande variété de textes et de types de textes plurimodaux.
(Coyle & Meyer, 2021: 41)
b) Fluidité épistémique :
« … le potentiel de l’intertextualité repose sur la capacité des apprenants à naviguer, à établir des liens, à argumenter, à faire des rapprochements ou à accepter de ne pas être d’accord avec les positions épistémologiques représentées par ou sous-jacentes à ces textes, afin d’éviter les conflits et malentendus épistémologiques. »
Nous appelons cela la fluidité épistémique.
(Meyer & Coyle: 23)
global citizenship
Rysen & Katzarska-Miller (2013) define global citizenship as “awareness, caring, and embracing cultural diversity while promoting social justice and sustainability, coupled with a sense of responsibility to act”.
Term in French:
citoyenneté mondiale
Rysen & Katzarska-Miller (2013) définissent la citoyenneté mondiale comme « la conscience, l’attention et l’acceptation de la diversité culturelle tout en promouvant la justice sociale et la durabilité, associées à un sentiment de responsabilité d’agir ».
growth mindset
“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work – brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” (Dweck: 2015)
Term in French:
état d’esprit de croissance
« Dans un état d’esprit de croissance, les gens croient que leurs capacités les plus fondamentales peuvent être développées par le dévouement et le travail acharné – le cerveau et le talent ne sont que le point de départ. Ce point de vue crée un amour de l’apprentissage et une résilience qui sont essentiels pour les grandes réalisations. » (Dweck: 2015)
literacy
“... literacy is now understood as a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world. Literacy is a continuum of learning and proficiency in reading, writing and using numbers throughout life and is part of a larger set of skills, which include digital skills, media literacy, education for sustainable development and global citizenship as well as job-specific skills.”
(UNESCO 2024)
literacy/literacies
“Communication skill. The term 'literacy' originally, and most often, applied to written communication. However it can also be applied to other forms, as in media literacy, computer literacy.”
Department for Children, Schools and Families, The Key Stage 3 Framework for Languages: Glossary: 7 (downloaded 2 November 2009) "It is clear from the extract from Street (2001) that literacy does not simply mean being able to read and write text. The following extracts unpick the various meanings of literacy, providing a clear picture of why it is necessary to refer to ‘literacies’ in the plural.
“Literacy is primarily something people do; it is an activity, located in the space between thought and text. Literacy does not just reside in people’s heads as a set of skills to be learned, and it does not just reside on paper, captured as texts to be analysed. Like all human activity, literacy is essentially social, and it is located in the interaction between people" (Barton and Hamilton 1998: 3).
Their six-point outline of how literacy functions as a set of social practices expands on this definition:
"Literacy is best understood as a set of social practices; these can be inferred from events which are mediated by written texts.
There are different literacies associated with different domains of life.
Literacy practices are patterned by social institutions and power relationships, and some literacies become more dominant, visible and influential than others.
Literacy practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices.
Literacy is historically situated.
Literacy practices change, and new ones are frequently acquired through processes of informal learning and sense making" (Barton and Hamilton 1998: 7).
Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. (1998) Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community. London: Routledge.
In addition to the socially and culturally situated nature of literacy, the picture becomes even more complex when we consider the impact of new technologies. Here we can refer to "new" or "digital" literacies.
“As we move from an industrial to a post-industrial information economy, one in which print literacy is not obsolete but certainly substantially transformed, then surely we need broader definitions of knowledge, literacy and pedagogy which will include study of the intertextuality of imageries, texts, icons and artefacts of new information economies, of media and of popular culture” (Luke 1998: 27).
Luke, C. (1998) ‘Pedagogy and Authority: Lessons from Feminist and Cultural Studies, Postmodernism and Feminist Pedagogy’, in D. Buckingham (ed.), Teaching Popular Culture: Beyond Radical Pedagogy. London: UCL Press.
The above are extracts from Mackey, M. (2002) Literacies across media. London: RoutledgeFalmer: 5-6."
"In developing contexts the issue of literacy is often represented as simply a technical one: that people need to be taught how to decode letters and they can do what they like with their newly acquired literacy after that, an approach I have referred to as an 'autonomous' model of literacy (...). The 'autonomous' model of literacy works from the assumption that literacy in itself — autonomously— will have effects on other social and cognitive practices. The model, however, disguises the cultural and ideological assumptions that underpin it and that can then be presented as though they are neutral and universal: the research described in this volume challenges this view and suggests that in practice the approach is simply imposing Western conceptions of literacy on to other cultures. The alternative, ideological model of literacy, to which many of the chapters in this book refer, offers a more culturally sensitive view of literacy practices as they vary from one context to another.
This model starts from different premises than the autonomous model—it posits instead that literacy is a social practice, not simply a technical and neutral skill; that it is always embedded in socially constructed epistemological principles. It is about knowledge: the ways in which people address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, being. Literacy, in this sense, is always contested, both its meanings and its practices, hence particular versions of it are always ‘ideological’, they are always rooted in a particular world-view and a desire for that view of literacy to dominate and to marginalise others (...).
The argument about social literacies (...) suggests that engaging with literacy is always a social act even from the outset. The ways in which teachers or facilitators and their students interact is already a social practice that affects the nature of the literacy being learned and the ideas about literacy held by the participants, especially the new learners and their position in relations of power. It is not valid to suggest that ‘literacy’ can be ‘given’ neutrally and then its ‘social’ effects only experienced afterwards.
Street, B. (ed.) (2001) Literacy and development: ethnographic perspectives. London: Routledge, 7-8."
Term in German:
Literalitäten
"Kommunikationsfertigkeit. Der Begriff 'Literalität' bezeichnete ursprünglich, und meistens, schriftliche Kommunikation. Er kann jedoch auch auf andere Formen angewendet werden, wie in medialer oder informatischer Literalität (im deutschsprachigen Raum oft auch als 'Medienkompetenz' bezeichnet, Anm. d. Übers.)."
Department for Children, Schools and Families, The Key Stage 3 Framework for Languages: Glossary: 7 (downloaded 2 November 2009) [Übersetzung ins Deutsche: K.-B. Boeckmann]"
meaning-making literacy
Combines several elements such as information literacy, media literacy and visual literacy.
multiliteracies
“Multiliteracy is a meaningful social and collaborative experience where students can work together with and learn from their peers and more experienced mentors. Multiliteracy is determined by social and cultural conventions that can be used and adapted based on specific purposes, modes and audiences. Therefore, a multiliteracy-based curriculum […] prepar[es] students to analyse multiple forms of text, discourses […] in multiple contexts and modes for multiple pursposes and multiple audiences” (Goldini 2008: 67, after Kern 1995, 2000, 2004, 2005).
Goldoni F. (2008), “Designing a foreign language curriculum in postsecondary education drawing from the multiliteracy, functionalist and genre-based approaches”, Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Vol. 5, pp. 63-85.
pluriliteracies
“For us, a pluriliteracies approach captures not only literacy continua with different interrelated axes, but also an emphasis on Literacy practices in sociocultural contexts, the hybridity of literacy practices afforded by new technologies, and the increasing interrelationship of semiotic systems.” (García et al. 2007: 215)
García Ofelia, Bartlett Lesley, Kleifgen JoAnne (2007), “From biliteracy to pluriliteracies”, in Auer P. & Wei Li (eds.), Handbook of multilingualism and multilingual communication, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 207-228.
pluriliteracies
An explicit
focus on disciplinary literacies in all subjects of schooling: since deeper learning is a domain specific process, education needs to find ways of promoting subject literacies in all subjects of schooling by focusing on subject specific ways of constructing and communicating knowledge, so that learners can become pluriliterate in the sense of acquiring subject literacies in several subjects of schooling.
- Pluriliterate language use: in a global world, learners need to be able to successfully and adequately communicate knowledge across cultures and languages. Therefore, an equally important facet of the ‘pluri-’ in pluriliteracies embraces and extends to being literate in several subjects and languages.
- Textual fluency: communication is increasingly plurimodal or hybrid in nature and reliant on multiple analogue and digital channels of communication and semiotic systems. Being able to critically evaluate sources is key to democratic citizenship and will prepare young learners for the world they will inhabit through understanding the need for social justice democratic cultural competence. Therefore, being pluriliterate also entails the ability to critically evaluate and produce a wide variety of plurimodal texts and text types.
(Coyle & Meyer 2021: 41)
pluriliteracy
In language teaching, pluriliteracy refers to the ability to mobilise textual skills in a transversal way. It can also mean the ability to use several graphic systems and to use them to produce and interpret written texts in different contexts.
References:
In a plurilingual context, the term refers to the transversal and interdependent development of textual competence and its promotion in a coherent way through the teaching of different languages (according to Cummins, 2000).
Source:
Cummins J. (2000),
Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire, Multilingual Matters, Buffalo.
"Social practices in reading and writing as a continuum between different contexts and conditions of development (family, school, societal) and in various forms (orthographic and graphic), from early learning to the most elaborate aspects, in one or more languages or varieties of languages and in various modalities, including both visual and digital." (Molinié and Moore, 2012, p. 4, own translation)
Source:
Molinié M. and Moore D. (2012), "Les littératies: une Notion en Questions en didactique des langues (NeQ)",
Recherches en didactique des langues et des cultures, 9(2).
"Pluriliteracies Teaching for Learning (PTL) provides pathways for deep learning across languages, disciplines and cultures by focusing on the development of disciplinary or subject specific literacies. Subject specific literacies are the key to deep learning and the development of transferable skills. Becoming literate in content subjects or topics will empower learners to successfully and appropriately communicate knowledge across cultures and languages."
Source:
Meyer O., Coyle D., Halbach A., Schuck K., Ting T. (2016), A pluriliteracies approach to teaching for learning, Council of Europe (European Centre for Modern Languages),
https://pluriliteracies.ecml.at/en/, accessed on 27 April 2022.
Term in French:
plurilittératie
Dans l’enseignement des langues, la plurilittératie désigne la capacité à mobiliser les compétences textuelles d’une manière transversale.
Elle peut être aussi la capacité à utiliser plusieurs systèmes graphiques et à s’en servir pour produire et interpréter des textes écrits dans différents contextes.