Within the European Union, teaching staff have been confronted with great challenges in heterogenous classrooms. One of these challenges relates to identifying suitable programmes for the teaching of language and literacy.Children may have a number of reasons for facing difficulties in this area, e.g. learning disabilities, a right to an individual special educational needs programme, social disadvantage, or a multilingual background. This challenge has increased over the past year, due to the increase in refugee numbers in Europe this past year, leading to rising numbers of pupils who struggle to follow lessons due to language issues. Many teachers have pointed out the lack of suitable professional development opportunities inthis area, and in the area of differentiated facilitation of literacy. They are faced with growing challenges, often without the required knowledge or skills. The project therefore aims to develop practically-oriented knowledge in the area of language and literacy development, and to make these available via an online-learning platform and two MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), to all those interested (teaching staff, volunteers, students). A starting point is a discussion with teaching staff in participating countries, through which questions will be developed which aim to address good practice in the area of language and literacy facilitation among a heterogenous student body. These questions will be addressed at three synthesised levels: 1) through relating to relevantexpert knowledge, 2) through examples of good practice, and 3) through the development of relevant exemplary materials. This synthesis will occur via a number of media, including text, video-sequences and video talks. Furthermore, materials will be developed from an international viewpoint, incorporating examples from many different national contexts.The project participants span universities, as well as a college and a school, from five different countries (Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, England and Spain). Each participating institution has expertise in at least two of the three relevant topic areas (multilingualism, inclusion, social disadvantage), resulting in a close network of competences. The following activities are at the core of the project: Questioning teachers about their questions/needs in the area of language and literacy facilitation and creation of case studies about teaching for further development through video sequences, video talks and texts, which will be made available on the online learning platform; Bring key findings together in two MOOCs (MOOC 1: Language Facilitation, MOOC 2: Literacy Facilitation); Creation of teaching handbooks for the continuation of MOOCs following the end of the project's life cycle.Due to the primary dissemination focus of project results and activities via the WWW, intellectual outputs will be openly accessible to anybody interested. In addition to this, project structures and results will be developed in such a way that all materials will be accessible and usable beyond the lifecycle of the project, specifically the online learning platform and the MOOCs. It is expected that resources will be made available in English, German and Spanish, allowing teachers to address everyday questions in the area of language and literacy development for children with difficulties in these areas. The focus is on well-researched, yet practically-oriented ideas, allowing staff to draw parallels to their own practice and helping staff to gain ideas for their own teaching, as well as for longer-term planning of provision. The project team is aware that the project results will form only one of many important aspects of daily teaching pressures facing staff, yet the project hopes to facilitate staff to develop their on pedagogic practice and competences. The long-term usability of the project lies in the development of expert knowledge in the area of language and literacy facilitation, relevant both within the EU and internationally. The project results will remain topical and relevant, since teaching staff in a multi-faceted Europe are continually confronted with questions around facilitation of children from a multitude of backgrounds.
The heterogeneity of learning groups in most classrooms poses common challenges for teachers in many European countries, although there are also specific characteristics within the countries. Three overarching aspects have been focused in this project: 1) A growing number of students speak a different language at home than in the classroom. Therefore, teachers cannot and must not expect students to master the language of instruction at school. 2) In all countries, also children with a socially disadvantaged background attend school. The opportunities for parents to support children do not always correspond to the support expected from the school. While family literacy offers have established themselves in Ireland, for example, these are unknown to most schools in Germany. 3) In addition, children with different learning requirements should learn together in the schools. Keywords such as "inclusion" have become buzz words, but the pedagogical possibilities for action are far behind what the popularity of the term might suggest. Last but not least, there are also such children in all countries who do not achieve the learning goals of the class and only learn to read and write with difficulty, or fail completely due to the tasks. Teachers play an important role in supporting children who have reference points in one or more of the above areas. Their knowledge and skills enable the teachers to create educational opportunities in a heterogeneous learning group that enable all children to expand their skills. The aim of the MLM Project was to provide (above all) teachers on the topics of multilingualism and literacy support with theoretical background knowledge as well as concrete examples of practical support. Concrete teaching materials for instant use on the next day should also help teachers to integrate the content presented into their own everyday lives. The combination of theoretical and practical content meets the needs of teachers in a special way. The developed content was made available on two platforms: In two online courses (MOOC, massive open online course; www.literacymooc.eu) and on the learning platform (www.euliteracy.eu). Content is available in German, English and Catalan, although there is no synchronous translation of all content; this was not intended. Rather, some content has been translated, others are only available for individual languages. The contents are videos, texts and teaching materials. The six participating institutions from five countries were able to contribute with overlapping and individual competences: In Germany, there was close cooperation between the Pädagogische Hochschule ("Pedagogical University ") in Freiburg (specialised in teacher training) and the Adolf Reichwein Bildungshaus ("Adolf Reichwein Educational House"), a state primary school and school for educational assistance with a proportion of students with a migration background of over 95%. The Universidad Autonoma of Catalonia brings special competences to the teaching of students who do not speak the language of instruction as their first language. The NCI (National College of Ireland) is an independent tertiary education institution. In 2006, the College founded the ELI (Early Learning Initiative), which deals with the specific problems of socially disadvantaged families. The partnership with the University of Sheffield was changed to a smaller role in the course of the Brexit referendum at the request of the university even before the application was submitted, since it was uncertain at that time how the political situation at the university would develop over the duration of the project. The university's expertise lies in multilingualism and literacy research, as well as in family literacy work. The University of Luxembourg has linguistic education and multilingualism as key research priorities. The main activities of the project were the conception of the two Moocs (massive open online course), the writing of articles for teachers and the creation of specific teaching materials. All content will be made available on the learning platform as well as other content arising from the other IOs (e.g. questions and answers, case descriptions, integrated into other work). The project can present phenomenal figures on the results achieved and their impact: In the period from May 2018 until today, more than 50,000 clicks were registered by more than 35,000 people on the contents of the learning platform and the Moocs. Thus far more people were reached than the project team had planned at the beginning of the project.