Developing teacher competences for pluralistic approaches: a new project by the ECML

Plurilingual and intercultural education requires specific competences from teaching staff. This is why the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe (ECML) has launched a new two-year project: "Developing teacher competences for pluralistic approaches. Training and reflection tools for teachers and teacher educators”. The project aims to develop scenarios for training teachers of all subjects based on the identification of teaching competences required to implement pluralistic approaches. On 28-29 September 2021, the ECML team involved a large number of participants from different countries in a hybrid workshop (face-to-face and online) in order to discuss and comment on the work done so far and to collaboratively develop new scenarios for teacher education. The next meeting is scheduled for February 2022.

Given the importance of identifying and developing these competences, the SMS 2.0 project team at Eurac Research is also following and participating in the development of the European project with great interest. The work of the ECML team is particularly inspiring for the COMPASS initiative (Didactic Competences in the Multilingual Classroom), whose aim is to support teams of teachers from German- and Italian-speaking schools in South Tyrol in leveraging the increasing linguistic heterogeneity of their classes. Within this initiative, which includes both a training and a research component, the Eurac Research team has also dedicated the first months of their activity to outlining the skills that teachers involved in plurilingual and intercultural teaching should possess. There are therefore many common interests and aims between the work carried out by the SMS 2.0 team and that of the ECML project.