Individual plurilinguality and deficiency in reading ability or poor reading competences are relevant topics in society and education policy in all five project partner countries. Cooperating partners of the EU project include several institutions that focus on teacher education and training. These are the Universities of Education in Weingarten (DE), St. Gallen (CH) and Vorarlberg (A), the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE), the Ministry of Education, SCRIPT, in Luxembourg, and four partner schools with grade 6-8 classes. At the core of the project is the didactic-methodological design for a multi-lingual readers' theater. Therefore, literary texts are transformed into read-ers’ theatre texts in dialogic form. Pupils practice reading aloud in groups and afterwards present their individual parts in plenary. The yet-to-be-developed didactic-methodological design includes reading aloud by the teacher as an important modeling measure as well as the subsequent communication based on the literary text between teacher and pupils. Readers’ theater is considered in reading fluency research as an effective fluency development method. Its use also results in increased correct word recognition und improved prosody (Young & Rasinski 2009: 10). The design will be developed with the help of the design-based research approach (Van den Akker et al. 2006). Based on close cooperation among researchers and practitioners, the aim of DBR is to generate methodologi-cal and pedagogical innovation through systematic design, testing and redesign while working within the school context. The project initiative responds to three key problems in the field of school, foreign and multilingual teaching practice: 1. results of the large reading performance studies over the last decade have shown in the fice cooperating partner countries (D / A / CH / B / LU) that there are large deficits in reading skills in school and foreign language in primary and particularly at the secondary level I, most notably for stu-dents from families with low socio-economic background (Prenzel, 2006: 24; OECD 2010: 64). 2. The partner countries‘ curricula demand a stronger network of education and foreign languages in place of an isolated language learning. 3. Due to increasingly internationally operated companies, increased mo-bility and jobs affected by globalization, EU-/Education Ministers and re-searchers are required to target the promotion of plurilingualism among learners. As benchmarks for 2020, «at least 50% of 15 year olds should be able to have a simple conversation in their first foreign language» and «at least 75% of pupils in lower secondary education should study at least two foreign languages» (European Commission: 2012, 33 and 35). The project aims to contribute to the theoretical foundation of a multilingual approach through collaboration between research and practice, as well as demonstrate a viable product for a multi-lingual approach to teaching. In practice this means: - to develop, in cooperation with teachers a teaching / learning environ-ment which on one hand increases the reading motivation and thus the reading skills of learners, through multilingual readers' theater, while, on the other hand, increases the acceptance among teachers and learners, to engage more in learning processes in multilingual education settings, - to develop best-practice examples of multilingual readers’ theater that can be transferred to other contexts, - to develop, test and optimize teaching materials for multilingual reading readers’ theater for German, English and French classes, which allow for differentiation according to performance levels and the inclusion of minority languages, - to develop, in close cooperation with education practitioners, a training module for teachers in order to instruct teachers in readers' theater and to provide them the skills necessary for their implementation, - to develop research instruments that appropriately increase the accep-tance by teachers and learners to engage in learning processes in multi-lingual learning environments teaching settings (acceptance study), - to develop a research instrument to measure the increase of reading mo-tivation, reading fluency as well as the development of language aware-ness among learners, - to contribute to the theoretical substantiation of the multilingual-didactic approach in which the teaching /learning environment and multilingual readers 'theater' are supported by solid knowledge of the school and for-eign language reading research as well as language teaching and learning research according to the design-based research approach Ansatzes (Reinmann 2005; Souvignier & Dignath 2010).
Individual plurilinguality and poor reading skills are relevant topics in society and education policy across European countries. The project initiative responded to three key problems in the field of school, foreign and multilingual teaching practice: - large deficits exist in reading skills in school and foreign languages of pupils at the primary and particularly at the secondary level, - curricula demand a stronger linkage between the teaching of school and foreign languages in place of an isolated language learning, - demands to target the promotion of plurilingualism among learners due to increasing globalisation. In this project, four institutions that focus on teacher education and training co-operated: the Universities of Education in Weingarten (Germany), St. Gallen (Switzerland), and Vorarlberg (Austria), the Ministry of Education, SCRIPT (Luxembourg), and four partner schools with grade 6-8 classes as well as a Swiss primary school. At the core of the project was the didactic-methodological design for a multilingual readers' theater. For this purpose, literary texts were transformed into readers’ theatre texts in dialogic form. Pupils practice reading aloud in groups and afterwards present their individual parts in plenary. The design includes reading aloud by the teacher as an important modeling measure, as well as the subsequent communication based on the literary text between teacher and pupils. The design was developed following the design-based research approach (Van den Akker et al. 2006). Based on close cooperation among researchers and practitioners, the aim of DBR is to generate methodological and pedagogical innovations through systematic design, testing and redesign while working within the school context. The project aimed to contribute to the theoretical foundation of a multilingual approach through collaboration between research and practice, as well as providing a viable product for a multilingual approach to teaching: - a teaching / learning environment entailing multilingual readers’ theatre was developed, which increases the motivation for reading and consequently the reading skills of learners, whilst also increasing the acceptance among teachers and learners to engage more in learning processes in multilingual education settings, - best-practice examples of multilingual readers’ theater were developed that can be transferred to other contexts and allow differentiation according to performance levels as well as the inclusion of minority languages. 32 readers’ theatre scripts that combine different languages (e.g. german-english, german-french, german-english-french-minority languages, etc. ) are available for download from the project’s website (see below). - a professional development module for teachers was developed that instructs teachers in readers' theater and provides them with the necessary skills to implement the design. Two international Multiplier-Events were conducted in order to distribute the training module among those working in the field of teaching and education. A movie showing how MELT can be implemented in various classroom settings is available for download from the project’s website. - the project contributed to the theoretical substantiation of the multilingual-didactic approach in which the teaching /learning environment and multilingual readers 'theater' are supported by solid knowledge of the school and foreign language reading research as well as language teaching and learning research according to the design-based research approach. An international conference on the topic of multilingual reading intervention was held at the University of Education in Weingarten. A significant number of international experts in the field contributed to this event that attracted approximately 100 participants. The following measures are in place to ensure sustainability: All products (the multilingual readers’ theatre scripts, movie, didactical-methodological instructions) are available for free from the project’s website (http://melt-multilingual-readers-theatre.eu/ , see http://melt-multilingual-readers-theatre.eu/en/ for an English version). Next to papers published in educational journals, two books are available for purchase: a handbook that contains theoretical background and practical instructions on multilingual readers’ theatre and a further publication contains a collection of papers presented at the international conference on multilingual reading intervention. In the near future, more dissemination activities are planned (poster presentations, talks, publications). The Universities of Education will offer seminars on MELT to increase the sensitivity and knowledge of future teachers with respect to multilingual reading intervention. Further professional development sessions on MELT are also planned, for example a one-day event to be held in Luxemburg (organized and financed by SCRIPT) in the school year of 2018-2019.