North, B., Piccardo, E., Goodier, T., Fasoglio, D., Margonis, R., & Rüschoff, B. (2022). Enriching 21st century language education: The CEFR Companion Volume, examples from practice. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing (original) (raw)
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2022
This volume of case studies will interest all those who aim to develop language education in order to promote and support Europe's rich linguistic and cultural diversity, thus fostering a culture of democracy and social justice in a time in which these values are increasingly under threat. This situation calls for a new vision of language education in which the development of mediation and plurilingual/pluricultural competence are crucial. These case studies report on experience in a wide variety of contexts with the concepts and descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment-Companion volume (CEFR Companion volume), which broadens the vision of the CEFR 2001, enriching the CEFR model in the areas of plurilingualism and mediation.
Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 2019
The CEFR’s action-oriented approach, including its concept of the user/learner as a social agent mobilising a plurilingual repertoire, represents a significant development from the communicative approach. The CEFR moves beyond the traditional four skills (spoken and written reception and production) to also include interaction and mediation, opening to a complex vision of the situated and integrated nature of language learning and language use. Advances in research highlight the need to overcome a vision of languages as stable, pure objects existing outside their speakers/users and a reductive view of learning as an internal cognitive process, meant to prepare for later real-life use. These theoretical advances have been flanked by bottom up developments bringing a more dynamic vision of language education that engages more meaningfully with the principles of the CEFR.The time was therefore ripe to complete the CEFR descriptive apparatus with new descriptors for mediation and plurilingual/pluricultural competence. This article outlines the conceptualisation, development and validation of these descriptors and their publication in the CEFR Companion Volume (2018), alongside a text clarifying the paradigm shift in language education implied by the notion of the user/learner as a plurilingual/pluricultural social agent.The goal is to promote quality, inclusive education for all, and in particular to further the recognition and valorisation of linguistic and cultural diversity and the promotion of plurilingual interculturality.
MEDIATION AND THE PLURILINGUAL / PLURICULTURAL DIMENSION IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION
Italiano LinguaDue, 2023
This article explains the integrated, complex, situated view of languages and language education that is gradually replacing the linear, ‘Cartesian’ view of languages as inert objects to be dissected, which has long dominated language education. It discusses the way mediation can act as a prism. Exactly as a prism decomposes white light into the spectrum of its constituting colours, mediation can help one grasp and handle the complexity of languages, itself augmented by the increasingly diverse nature of our classrooms. In discussing the plurilingual nature of mediation, the article introduces descriptors from the 2020 CEFR Companion Volume and explains the concepts of languaging and plurilanguaging (Piccardo, 2017, 2018), showing how mediation and the languaging involved in it can contribute to a new vision of an action-oriented, plurilingual language education. Finally, the article explains and illustrates the concept of action-oriented scenarios, giving a brief account of two implementation projects, one mainly in Canada and one in Lombardy, reporting the very positive effects on student motivation and engagement.
This paper presents the European project with the title "Mediation in Teaching, Learning and Assessment" (henceforth METLA) and describes its main principles, goals and outputs. Initiated in 2020 and ended in 2022, METLA was supported by the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML, Council of Europe) and developed two main outputs: a Teaching Guide for supporting teachers to implement mediation in different educational contexts and a databank with crosslinguistic mediation activities which are open, free, downloadable and adaptable. Both outputs draw upon the new descriptors for mediation of the Companion Volume of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRCV, 2020). The paper ends by discussing the main features of the METLA tasks thus emphasizing their potential to help learners develop their plurilingual and pluricultural competence.
International Journal of Multilingualism
The articles in this special issue explore approaches to research and action in language education that have the potential to transform subjectivities and practices in relation to linguistic diversity. They seek ways within education and teacher education to overcome what Gogolin ([1994]. Der monolinguale 'habitus' der multilingualen Schule. Waxmann Verlag) called the 'mononlingual habitus', i.e. the deep-seated habit of assuming monolingualism as the norm for all individuals and thus for schooling. In doing so, the contributors aim to (re)inscribe multi/plurilingual education in Europe as a socially engaged pedagogical approach and field of research grounded in ideals of social justice. In this introduction, we provide a brief overview of multi/plurilingual education in Europe, linking to current critical work on neoliberalism, language, education and social justice. We then introduce and discuss some of the key theoretical concepts used by the different authors for studying subjectivities (e.g. attitudes, beliefs, ideologies, mind-sets) as well as the methodological approaches employed in the articles. We close with an overview of the different articles that make up the special issue and by highlighting some of the enduring issues in the field of multi/ plurilingual education.
Journal of e-learning and knowledge society, 2019
The CEFR’s action-oriented approach, including its concept of the user/learner as a social agent mobilising a plurilingual repertoire, represents a significant development from the communicative approach. The CEFR moves beyond the traditional four skills (spoken and written reception and production) to also include interaction and mediation, opening to a complex vision of the situated and integrated nature of language learning and language use. Advances in research highlight the need to overcome a vision of languages as stable, pure objects existing outside their speakers/users and a reductive view of learning as an internal cognitive process, meant to prepare for later real-life use. These theoretical advances have been flanked by bottom up developments bringing a more dynamic vision of language education that engages more meaningfully with the principles of the CEFR. The time was therefore ripe to complete the CEFR descriptive apparatus with new descriptors for mediation and pluri...