European educational policy makers envision the development of communicative competence as the main goal of institutionalized foreign language (FL) education (Council of Europe, 2001) and hope for the realization of the Barcelona Summit (2002) “mother tongue + 2” objective. Yet, learning a foreign language often proves challenging, especially to learners with special educational needs, as they experience pedagogical disadvantages because of a range of conditions stemming from biological, environmental, and psychosocial causes. International organizations such as UNESCO and the OECD see this risk and promote the implementation of inclusive education systems that enable all learners to actively engage in learning and reach their potential. However, on a practical level, not all educational systems and agents within them are truly ready to realize such task on a daily basis. In fact, some foreign language teachers even report strong feelings of being overwhelmed and disillusioned with the prospect of offering equal opportunities to all their foreign language students (Dose, 2019). As a response to this situation, the VInDOW project proposes the development of comprehensive and versatile digital educational modules that demonstrate how the principles of inclusion – in their broad, diversity-oriented interpretation – can be applied in the field of foreign language education. Specifically, the modules combine theoretical, empirical and evidence-based knowledge, as well as insights from language teaching practice with educational policy guidelines about the following topics: 1. Dyslexia and reading skills in the FL classroom 2. Social, emotional and linguistic challenges in spoken FL communication 3. Multilingual/multicultural challenges in FL classrooms 4. Autism in the FL classroom 5. Neurodiversity as a challenge in the FL classroom Structurally, the modules consists of the following components: - teaching units focused on topics 1-5 for pre- and in-service foreign language teacher education including hands-on, interactive and collaborative activities and materials; - a teacher’s companion with a transparent description of desired learner outcomes (can-do descriptors), didactic commentary for the teaching unit and examples of possible teaching scenarios; - a reflection tool-kit for monitoring the learning process of the module target audience (i.e. pre- and in-service teachers). The modules will be available for use both as complete regular courses or intensive workshops (e.g. with 3 ECTS workload across participating European institutions) and as individual smaller-scale units/topics, on various levels of teacher education enhancing systematic and sustainable integration into teacher education structures. They will also be applicable in virtual learning environments. During the course of the project, the team will test the newly-designed modules in tertiary education by incorporating them into the partner universities' curricula as well as in the form of a learning activity/an international workshop (IP) for students (C1) from all project partner countries, and a joint staff-training for individuals (C2) associated with the field of foreign language teaching.Throughout the project, efforts will be made to disseminate information about the project and the modules, e.g. during the workshop and conference held at the University of Bremen (multiplier event E1). The expected result is the raising of awareness of the ways in which inclusive foreign language education can be made sustainable among stakeholders involved in foreign language learning: teacher trainers, teachers, educational policy makers, university staff and researchers, students and pupils, authors of learning materials, etc.
Our goal was to deliver informative, functional, versatile and reliable digital learning and teaching materials that could be used in various European HEIs that educate FL teachers to shape their teaching in an inclusive and sustainable manner. During the course of the project, we have developed and tested 5 comprehensive and digital educational modules for pre- and in-service teacher education that demonstrate how the principles of inclusion – in their broad, diversity-oriented interpretation – can be applied in the field of foreign language education. Specifically, our modules combine theoretical, empirical and evidence-based knowledge, as well as insights from language teaching practice with educational policy guidelines about the following topics: 1. Dyslexia and reading skills in the FL classroom 2. Social, emotional and linguistic challenges in spoken FL communication 3. Multilingual/multicultural challenges in FL classrooms 4. Autism in the FL classroom 5. Neurodiversity as a challenge in the FL classroom Our modules can be used both as complete regular courses or intensive workshops (e.g. with 3 ECTS workload across participating European institutions) and as individual smaller-scale units/topics, on various levels of teacher education enhancing systematic and sustainable integration into teacher education structures. They are also applicable in virtual learning environments. Structurally, the modules consists of the following components: - teaching units focused on topics 1-5 for pre- and in-service foreign language teacher education including hands-on, interactive and collaborative activities and materials; - a teacher’s companion with a transparent description of desired learner outcomes (can-do descriptors), didactic commentary for the teaching unit and examples of possible teaching scenarios; - a reflection tool-kit for monitoring the learning process of the module target audience (i.e. pre- and in-service teachers). In the process of the development of our IOs we also grew as a team and established a well-functioning and reliable international network of researchers and teacher educators who are willing to engage in further cooperation projects. We also established ways to foster the internationalization of teacher education and developed sustainable ways to foster student (virtual) mobility at our institutions. We also developed reliable and valid evaluation methods for the development of learning and teaching materials for tertiary teacher education.
As an international team of foreign language (FL) teachers, teacher educators and researchers, we identified a challenge that all of us encounter in our profession. As FL teachers educators it is our job to guide pre- and in-service teachers through the the development of communicative competence, which is what European educational policy makers consider the main goal of institutionalized foreign language (FL) education (Council of Europe, 2001). Educational policy makers also hope for the realization of the Barcelona Summit (2002) “mother tongue + 2” objective. Yet, learning a foreign language often proves extremely difficult, especially to learners with special educational needs, as they experience pedagogical disadvantages because of a range of conditions stemming from biological, environmental, and psychosocial causes. International organizations such as UNESCO and the OECD see this risk and promote the implementation of inclusive education systems that enable all learners to actively engage in learning and reach their potential. However, on a practical level, not all educational systems and agents within them are truly ready to realize such task on a daily basis (Haug, 2017). In fact, some foreign language teachers even report strong feelings of being overwhelmed and disillusioned with the prospect of offering equal opportunities to all their foreign language students (Dose, 2019). The needs that we wanted to address in our project were providing pre- and in-service FL teachers with learning and teaching materials that would explain how to create inclusive foreign language classrooms and make learning a FL accessible to all students. The primary target group of the VINDOW project were foreign language teacher educators, who use the products that we developed during the course of the project, i.e. teaching and learning materials, in the education of pre- and in-service foreign language teachers. These, in turn, form the secondary target group of the project. We believed that targeting these two groups is a sustainable way to implement principles of inclusive education in the domain of foreign languages, as these two target groups are multipliers who have the capacity to enable the transfer of knowledge and competences to the tertiary target group, namely foreign language learners. The OECD ("Teachers matter" 2005) points to a link between the quality of teaching/teacher education and student attainment: Effective teaching depends to a large extent on the expertise of teachers. We aimed to strengthen and support their expertise in the domain of inclusive education.