Global Citizenship and Multilingual Competences toolkit.

Aligning with the ANGEL network's Global Education Digest project, the recently launched 'Global Citizenship and Multilingual Competences' (GCMC) toolkit project highlights the importance of linking global citizenship education (GCE) and multilingualism.

The Erasmus+ funded project, with partners in Austria, the UK, Netherlands, Italy and Germany, aims to provide online teacher CPD on how to integrate global citizenship goals and plurilingual pedagogies into teaching.

An appreciation of linguistic plurality and the integration of plurilingual pedagogies are core contributors to global citizenship. As Torpsten (2011, p. 4) argues, “when skills increase in different languages, [people] become aware of their identities as multilingual persons [as well as] their possibilities of being active, multicultural, global citizens”. Therefore, this project aims to support teachers in developing their knowledge and skills about plurilingual pedagogies and how to respect and utilize the linguistic resources learners and teachers may bring with them into the classroom. .

Our hope is that the online course and toolkit will inspire a large number of teachers and teacher educators with practical ideas of how to make global citizenship and plurilingual pedagogies of their regular practices. Working towards UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals depends on active, engaged future citizens who respect each other, appreciate diversity, and can work together as collaborators across cultures and contexts. This project seeks to enable teachers to integrate those global life skills into their teaching, no matter what subject they teach. This is the future of education.