ERASMUS+ aims to improve the quality of teaching and learning from pre-primary through to adult education across Europe. CATAPULT – Computer-Assisted Training And Platforms to Upskill LSP Teachers – is a 3-year project which aims to meet this objective by training highly-skilled language educators, in adult and higher education, equipped with the necessary professional skills to train Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) learners in the digital era. This goal will be achieved through a collaborative European project undertaken by Higher Education Institutions, an international language association involved in the promotion of quality in language learning and teaching, and independent partners in 6 different countries which strive to contribute to the improvement of the quality of the teaching and learning of Languages for Specific Purposes in Europe through the provision of specific training and tools for the professional development of LSP teachers with particular focus on improved in-service training through and in the use of technology-enhanced environments. By developing a Common Competence Framework, a training programme delivered through a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for European language teachers, an accreditation procedure and a Community of Practice (CoP) Platform, it is envisaged that LSP teachers (and teacher trainers) will be provided with a tool-kit enabling them to be more adequately skilled LSP teachers and more competitive on the adult and higher education job markets, thus increasing their employability and career options. It is believed that the Common Competence Framework, MOOC and CoP Platform developed can have a far-reaching impact if adopted and integrated by other institutions, individual language teachers and adult education providers outside of the CATAPULT project partners. Thanks to rigorous quality assessment as part of a thorough accreditation procedure, the training modules delivered through the MOOC will also offer optional certification to those completing the programme. This programme, with a dual focus on LSP didactics and technology integration, will be developed by the CATAPULT consortium and be accessible to a wider audience thanks to an Open Education Resources (OER) policy. Trained and certified LSP teachers will then have access to a tool-kit comprising a CoP Platform where they will be able to advertise their specific skills and directly contract with adult learners seeking training in the specific LSP they have been certified to teach (matching service for offer and demand). It is foreseen within the CATAPULT project to draw up an Impact Study based on trainee LSP teacher feedback, lesson planning observation and the level of appropriation of the CATAPULT tool-kit. The Study will therefore analyse the added value of the specific training offered by CATAPULT. Finally, policy recommendations related to the relevance of integrating an LSP component in language teacher-training programmes will be drafted with pointers for the future.
European trends towards inscreasing academic and professional mobility and expanding markets have led to the need for European citizens and workers with specialised language skills, i.e. languages for academic or occupational purposes, as opposed to general purpose language skills. Concomittantly to the multiplication of language for specific purpose (LSP) courses, both in tertiary and adult education, the increasing need for LSP teachers should have fostered an increased need for LSP teacher education but the lack of specific training offered to both trainee and practising language teachers is consistently pointed out in published research, with LSP teachers having to learn « on the job ». It therefore seems that policymakers’ assumption is that general language teacher education is enough to equip language teachers with the skills necessary to teach LSP classes in spite of researchers noting, amo,g other things, that the approaches and methodologies are quite different. Still, with the notable exception of Howard & Brown’s 1997 collective volume, LSP teacher education has so far received very little attention in published research in Europe and beyond as well as in previous European projects. In addition, as noted by several researchers (Delcloque 1997, Belcher 2017, Sarré 2021), LSP teaching can greatly benefit from the integration of digital technologies, even more so than general language teaching. This obviously supposes that LSP teachers have been trained in integrating these tools and approaches into their own teaching. The CATAPULT project aims to use innovative methods (in the forms of a MOOC and a Community of Practice Platform) to address this dual need, that is to offer training on both the specific approaches to LSP teaching and the integration of digital technologies in the teaching of LSPs to both practising LSP teachers and language teacher educators. The CATAPULT project targets European language teachers involved in LSP teaching. The project’s target groups are therefore primarily (1) LSP adult educators (freelance language teachers offering training to professionals in the industry) (2) LSP teachers in Higher Education Institutions (as this is also a context where LSPs are commonly taught) (3) language teacher trainers. The outcomes of the project also aim to contribute to the modernizing of language teacher education programmes across Europe, which explains why teacher educators involved in initial language teacher education and continuing professional development (CPD) are one of the project’s target groups. The project has enabled more than 600 European language teachers to develop professionally through the MOOC developed by the consortium, and nearly 250 LSP teachers to join the community of practice gathered on a specifically designed platform in order to pursue their professional development throughout their career. Coordinated by Sorbonne University, the CATAPULT project involved the expertise of five partners in Finland, Germany, Poland, Greece and the Netherlands. The partnership started with analysing both (1) the needs of potential employers of LSP teachers and (2) the training needs of European LSP teachers. On the basis of this inventory, a complementary study of the existing training courses in the partner countries as well as of national competence frameworks, and a meta-study of scientific publications on the teaching and learning of LSPs, the consortium then drew up a common competence framework for the European LSP teacher. In order to help teachers develop some of the identified competences, online training modules were then developed and delivered on a dedicated MOOC. By developing an online environment for a community of practice of European LSP teachers, the consortium wanted to give LSP teachers the opportunity to continue their lifelong learning once they had completed the MOOC. Finally, the quality approach was a concern of the consortium throughout the project by the development of evaluation grids and specific procedures, by the implementation of accreditation procedures for the trained teachers and by a quality audit of all the project outputs. Thanks to an impact study of the tools and materials developed, the consortium was able to produce a number of recommendations for political decision-makers for better recognition of the specificities of LSP teaching and the integration of relevant training. Some of these recommendations have already been put into effect locally, in particular through the integration of LSP training modules in initial teacher education based on the content of the CATAPULT MOOC. In the longer term, it will be LSP learners (adults and students in Higher education in particular) who will benefit from the pedagogical expertise of their LSP teachers who will make the most of a number of digital technologies.