Children in pre-school institutions

In complement to the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme, one project in the ECML’s 2008-2011 programme deals with the process of mobility programmes as a whole: the preparatory stages of the study abroad programme, the time spent abroad and the post-mobility programme experience and follow-up phase. For pedagogical monitoring of mobility experiences (real and virtual) a double learning scenario (teachers in training and pupils in primary and secondary school) is being developed.

To fully exploit the learning scenarios the new project is expected to adapt the material to the upper secondary context where both students and their teachers would benefit from tools structuring and guiding the study abroad experience.

Upper secondary school learners and learners at tertiary level (student teachers of languages)

Curricula for the majority language classroom usually do not refer to the fact that the teaching and learning takes place in a plurilingual environment. Likewise, the development of the plurilingual repertoire and intercultural competences of students, in most cases, is not on the agenda for teaching and learning languages as subjects in their own right.

In order to break out of the prevailing monolingual approach diversity needs to be addressed in the curriculum of majority languages when taught as a subject. For this purpose competences and respective descriptors based on inclusive, plurilingual and intercultural approaches in majority language learning need to be recognised and implemented in a way that they complement and enrich existing curricula for this domain.

• Guidelines for developing easy to apply plurilingual components of existing curricula of majority language classes
• Sample teaching modules providing practical material for teachers interested in applying the guidelines

Subject classes in mainstream schooling are normally taught in the majority language. But the language dimension of history, science or other school subjects is often a hidden part of the respective curricula. Nevertheless, both, students from diverse backgrounds and students speaking the majority language as their L1 are required to develop academic language proficiency for successful learning.

The content and language integrated approach (CLIL) provides an interesting model and significant expertise in this area. CLIL experts can inform subject teachers on how to bring forward the language aspect for the benefit of subject teaching. With a focus on the development of subject competences through the development of language proficiency by embracing all learners’ languages this project provides support for subject teacher education where little or no attention is yet given to the language component.

In this respect, the envisaged project builds on CLIL expertise but is not a typical CLIL-project as it does not involve bilingual teaching aiming to develop language competences in one defined foreign target language in addition to content learning.

Media literacy and learner autonomy play a major role in lifelong learning processes. In one way or another school curricula cater for the development of competences in these areas but there is no coherent approach as to how to develop media literacy and learner autonomy for the purpose of language learning outside the classroom in informal contexts.

This project will help foreign language teachers in the adult education sector to become mentors developing learners’ attitudes and providing guidance for the development of the learners’ autonomous web-based learning paths focusing on exploring their language competences in parallel to and beyond organised course instruction.  The project will also cater for the diversity of the adult learners’ backgrounds.

Current ECML project: “Language associations and collaborative support” (LACS)