This booklet provides an introduction to the central concepts of digital literacy and citizenship and to the pedagogical approach developed by the e-lang citizenship project (“Digital citizenship through language education”, www.ecml.at/elangcitizen). This project (2020-2022) complements the e-lang project (“Digital citizenship through language education”, www.ecml.at/elang) and is part of the Council of Europe’s European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) programme “Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences”. We are publishing this booklet because we believe that any proposal for the use of digital technology must be based on a clearly articulated didactic and pedagogical concept.

In addition, we felt it was important to define what the project team means by digital citizenship and digital literacy. In the first two chapters we therefore set out our definitions and outline the components that constitute digital citizenship and literacy.

The pedagogical framework of the e-lang citizen project is based on two main concepts: an active, participatory, and transformative pedagogy (presented in chapter 3), and a sociointeractional vision of communication and action (explained in chapter 4).

These principles, presented in this booklet, feed into language teaching, and learning practice through the promotion of real-world tasks (discussed in chapter 5). These tasks enable learners not only to develop language and action competences in authentic situations and to act as language users, but also to exercise and strengthen their digital literacy and citizenship. Learners thus become, through the realisation of real-world tasks, citizens and users of languages and digital tools and resources. Throughout the book we will use the term citizen as user of languages and digital tools.

In addition to this type of task, the e-lang citizen project includes reflective tasks (presented in chapter 5) which address different dimensions of digital citizenship and enable learners to reflect on the use(s) of digital technology, particularly their own usages. In chapter 6, we explain how the project has guided the design of the task sheets that we have developed for language teachers who wish to implement the pedagogical approach of the e-lang citizen project. These task sheets, which teachers can adapt to suit their learners, their needs, their constraints, and their contexts, are freely available in a database on the project website. The tasks are proposed for secondary and higher education.

As with the proposals made in the e-lang project, we hope that the proposals we are about to make will be of interest to practitioners who wish to help their learners develop digital literacy and citizenship while developing communication and action competences.

Publication year: 2023

Author(s): Jeanneau Catherine, Christian Ollivier

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FR