Global Citizenship and Multilingual Competences Toolkit

Global citizenship education (GCE) has become part of many international educational policies and an educational priority in the 21st century. Language learning and multilingualism have great potential to contribute to the achievement of GCE goals, as they stimulate cross-cultural awareness and help develop intercultural literacy. It is the aim of this project to empower teachers of all subjects to integrate GCE goals with a plurilingual approach into their regular teaching.

Project Activities	Products	Events	Online

Research theme: Multilingualism and Language learning
Duration: 01/09/2020 - 31/08/2023
Coordinating partner: Universität Graz (AT)
Mercator Staff: Katahrina Thomas, Jan Ybema, Cor van der Meer
Funding: Erasmus+ Programme - KA2 Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices / KA201 Strategic Partnerships for school education
Collaboration with: Universität Graz (AT), Mercator European Research Centre / Fryske Akademy (NL), UNewcastle University (Upon Tyne) (UK), Alma Mater Studorium of the Universita di Bologna (IT), Neosmart GmbH (AT/DE).

Project activities

In this project, examples of good practice of teaching GCE and plurilingual approaches will be collected, drawing on different subjects and languages. Its aim is to provide online teacher development resources to support secondary teachers of all subjects in learning ways to integrate GCE goals including plurlingualism into their daily practice in sustainable ways which will be motivating for them as educators and invaluable for their learners. Our project will create digital resources to help teachers to understand, gain knowledge about, practice, and integrate global citizenship goals through a plurilingual approach into their teaching practices.

To meet these aims, three main forms of output will be developed. Firstly, examples of good practice in respect to GCE and plurilingual pedagogies will be gathered. Based on these, a framework for teachers to self-assess their competences is to be created. The examples of good practice will also form the input basis of the multimodal online course and toolkit for teacher professional development, which is the second major output. The website, which houses the course, will also facilitate community action by participants who can upload localisations and subject-specification adaptations and innovations. The final output is an accompanying manual for teacher educators who may wish to adapt the online course and toolkit for use in their teacher education programmes.

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Products

Global Citizenship Education

This innovative project will develop three main products:

Self-reflective framework of competences (IO1)
This framework of good practice will outline the competences based on a model of values, attitudes, knowledge and skills (VAKS) which teachers, who integrate GCE and plurlingualism, display in their practice;
Digitised training materials including searchable database for localisation ad subject-specification (IO2)
The online course materials (IO2) will encompass two main strands: focus on teachers (developing their awareness and understanding of GCE and multilingualism through values and attitudes) and focus on teaching (focus on engagement and integration of knowledge and skills about GCE practices and plurilingual pedagogies);
Implementation manual for teacher educators based on experiences from dissemination (IO3)
In the final stage of the project, the online tools will be disseminated internationally in the form of face-to-face events and online webinars.

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GCMC Multiplier Events

To disseminate GCMC's goals, activities and products, the partners organise four Multiplier Events in each partner country, to which GCMC's stakeholders will be invited.

The GCMC team will organise special workshops during these events in which experts in multilingualism will share their knowledge with the stakeholders, and in return the stakeholders are asked to share their experiences and what problems they are facing. Involvement of teachers is essential, because they will provide examples of good practice of teaching GCE and multilingualism and will give their constructive and invaluable feedback on the online course and materials.

For exact dates, please visit the GCMC website.

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