DiCE.Lang: a training package

Abstract

Digital Citizenship Education (DCE) has become one of the priorities among all school curricula worldwide. Thus, it is essential that teachers become aware of the importance of implementing teaching and learning practices and developing DCE in Foreign Language (FL) classrooms. The DiCE.Lang (Digital Citizenship Education and Foreign Languages) is an Erasmus+ project (2020-1-DE01-KA203-005712), which started in September 2020 and ends in August 2023 and involves a consortium of five European institutions: University of Munich, University of Aveiro, University of Limerick, University of Latvia and Siena Italian Studies. The project aims to develop teachers’ digital competence by putting in evidence the importance of oriented educational practices and the creation of unit plans and pedagogical resources for the development of DCE in FL education. In fact, the Council of Europe states that there is a “lack of awareness among educators of the importance of digital citizenship competence development for the well-being of young people growing up in today’s highly digitised world, and the limited number of suitably targeted pedagogical resources available” (2019, p. 9). One of the outputs of the DiCE.Lang project is a Teacher Training Package (TTP), under the coordination of the University of Aveiro. This output complies a One-off event with a webinar and a workshop for teachers, a Module for Curricular Integration at University, which was already implemented in Riga and Aveiro with the aim of raising pre-service teachers’ awareness on these topics, a handbook and a free online course. This self-study online course was designed to be concluded in a totally autonomous way. It is addressed to pre and in-service teachers and teacher trainers and aims to develop and improve the participants’ knowledge about DCE and share practices, methodologies and resources regarding this issue. In our paper, we aim to discuss possibilities for the training of FL teachers as far as DCE is concerned, presenting the above mentioned TTP as a possible approach: its structure, main goals and potential for the development of new teacher practices regarding the DCE in FLE. We would also like to show some of the results of this training package based on the activities developed by the participants as well as their opinions, feedback and possible practices to be implemented in schools. So far, the participants involved in this course were given the opportunity to develop their knowledge on DCE, and to be part of training activities which enabled them to empower younger citizens to actively and responsibly participate in a digital society and to foster their skills of effective and critical use of digital technologies.