Context

The project builds on the results of the ALC project (“Across Languages and Cultures”, ECML, 2004-2007), which leads to the development of the Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches (FREPA). The reference document “FREPA – Competences and Resources” offers a comprehensive list of descriptors relating to knowledge, attitudes and skills which can be developed by pluralistic approaches. 

The FREPA project (ECML, 2008-2011) builds on the results of the ALC project. Based on the reference document, this project aimed to produce an online tool for use by teachers: (a) a bank of teaching materials, (b) tables of descriptors across the curriculum, that give an approximate indication of their relevance at different phases of the curriculum and (c) a teacher training kit.

Furthermore, the FREPA project integrated the results of two other ECML projects: the project “Regional/Minority Languages in Bi-/Plurilingual Education” (EBP-ICI), building bridges between regional languages, minority languages through intercomprehension and awakening to languages activities, thereby promoting those languages, and the project “Majority Language Instruction as Basis for Plurilingual Education” (MARILLE), establishing links between the language of schooling, mother tongues and second languages. Those projects have also drawn on the conceptual framework proposed by FREPA’s reference document. 

Today, the reference document is one of the instruments proposed by the Council of Europe on the “Platform of resources and references
 for plurilingual and intercultural education” and well-known by educational researchers, who use or refer to it in their work. But for the bank of teaching materials and the training kit for teachers an important mediation work remains to be done, both among teachers and their trainers.