TTRAILs addresses the issue of teacher education and skills development to promote high quality and innovative teaching in the field of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). The starting point of the project is the fact that most higher education teachers involved in the LSP field have received little or no specific training, which is a matter of particular concern for teachers and learners of LSP in VET institutions where language skills are expected to enhance mobility and employability. The 8 partners involved will explore the situation and needs of teaching LSP to define objectives and implement LSP teacher training programmes made to measure for the specific target. They will contribute to the design of new LSP teacher training programmes that will be offered at European higher education institutions, on a transnational collaborative basis because the problems identified cannot be dealt with on a regional basis only. TRAILs will contribute to innovative solutions and tools to support skills development for LSP staff and for future LSP teachers in higher education, both at national level for each of the partners and at the European level. To address the challenge set in the highly specific context of LSP, a transnational and collaborative approach will be tested and evaluated. Based on needs analysis, input from research and good practice, the project will rely on ICT innovative potential for communication and preparation and on a customized methodology. LSP teacher training will be linked to the needs of future and current LSP teachers in terms of teaching methodology with particular reference to the use of ICT in classroom and blended learning and teaching. The targeted public are higher education LSP teachers and future language teachers. The training outcomes and curriculum of an LSP teacher training programme will be defined and the LSP teacher training programme will be tested through the TRAILs Summer School for the development of relevant and high-quality skills and competences of future and existing ESP language teachers. The most important results to disseminate will be the intellectual outputs (identification and analysis of LSP teacher training programmes in Europe, identification of LSP teacher needs, training outcomes of the TRAILs Summer School, LSP teacher training curriculum, and evaluation method and tool) as these provide the fundamental steps that will lead to a successful implementation of the TRAILs Summer School. TRAILs will also contribute to promote LSP in language teaching. Specific dissemination tools will be developed through the project to be distributed at multiplier events (a brochure project website, Facebook page). All project partners have broad networks of professional contacts, also through sectorial associations. Direct beneficiaries for each partner is estimated around 30. We reckon the indirect beneficiaries will approximatively be 1000.
The TRAILs project focused on the preparation, design, and implementation of an innovative and robust Europe-wide teacher training programme for teachers of specialised languages (now LSP), in response to the worrying finding that most higher education teachers in this field have not received specific training, in a context where language skills are expected to enhance mobility and employability. The reports and documents corresponding to the different phases of the project have been uploaded on the valorisation platform. Defined at the kick-off meeting, the approach adopted in this project enabled the eight partners to respond to the challenge posed by the extremely specific context of LSP, in a transnational and collaborative approach with exchanges during transnational meetings, discussions by email and working documents posted on Google Drive. Based on a study of the real situation in the field, carried out in synergy with the possibilities offered by research, the work was divided and organised in several interdependent phases, from preparation to implementation and evaluation. The first step was to review the supply of LSP teacher training programmes in Europe in the European Higher Education Area: they are scarce and very heterogeneous. Following this exploration of the institutional side, the work focused on the target audience: LSP teachers in higher education. The field research (surveys and interviews) identified the needs of this audience and their expectations in terms of training. The gaps identified between the existing training offer and the training required for these teachers were used to define relevant and applicable teaching-learning objectives, and then to design a training programme for LSP teaching aimed at supporting the development of the competences of the target audience (in-service participants and students). The lesson planning is divided into teaching modules that alternate between interactive plenary sessions and group work. Originally scheduled for September 2020 in Zagreb, the training event had to be moved to February 2021 due to the pandemic. All the elements had to be reworked in view of providing distance learning. Despite the difficulties, the partners managed to adapt their working methods and their training offer to the new requirements of distance learning. Each lesson plan was reviewed in detail to ensure that the pilot course would meet its objectives. Conducted online from 22 to 26 February 2021, the training included 11 modules addressing the needs of future and current LSP teachers in terms of teaching methodology, with particular reference to the use of ICT. Participants were also provided with the technical support of an accompanying document to support the activity and extend the process of reflection. It was noted that all the training sessions were clearly appreciated by the participants who showed real commitment and managed, together with the trainers, to create an atmosphere favourable to learning and friendly collaboration. Throughout the project, the work was disseminated (http://trails.inspe-bordeaux.fr/, https://www.researchgate.net/project/TRAILS-LSP-Teacher-Training-Summer-School) and the results obtained were made known to the stakeholders through the organisation of dissemination events which gave rise to debates and made it possible to strengthen cooperation with networks working in a similar field, such as the Erasmus + CATAPULT project. A booklet was produced and translated into each of the partners' languages to complement the presentation. The final conference allowed the approach to be further consolidated. The work was also presented at conferences and workshops. Among the writings on the project, we should mention articles in the proceedings of several conferences as well as chapters published or in the process of being published, notably in the framework of a collective work "LSP Teacher Training Summer School. The TRAILs project", which is expected to contribute to the dissemination of the LSP teacher training programme, evaluation methods and tools. Building on the work of TRAILs, the Erasmus + LSP-TEOC.Pro project, which started in September 2020, aims to develop a multilingual online course for LSP teaching.