Using ECML resources in different contexts
Guidelines and practical examples

How do projects relate to existing priorities and developments?

How can a project be used on a stand-alone basis or be integrated into other activities?

Which aspects of an activity or project might be used?  Which might need to be adapted first?

How might implementation take place? How might it be carried out in stages?

What is the potential impact of a project?   How might this be assessed/ evaluated?

What possible challenges might we face? How might we address them?

How can project outcomes be mediated and/or communicated with others?

How can project outcomes be mediated and/or communicated with others?

On local, national and international bases	It is important to find the right person to mediate a project. In this short video, we hear how adaptation was challenged by the fact that the Swedish participant in the Parents project worked with a different sector from the focus of the project. EPOSTL (European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages) has national EPOSTL coordinators in a number of countries, who can mediate the project with other teachers in those countries.  Some projects contain ideas on dissemination, e.g. DOTS (Developing Online Teaching Skills). Most projects have a number of power point presentations available for downloading on their website, e.g. the ECEP (Encouraging the culture of evaluation among professionals) project. In some cases the presentations are available as PDFs. See also the presentations on a number of areas relating to the RelEx (Classroom Assessment related to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) project. The LACS (Language associations and collaborative support) projects promote collaboration between language teacher associations and other organisations in order to support one another. Language teacher associations are in a strong position to communicate with members, disseminating and mediating the projects so they can be used in classrooms.  Here are a number of examples from LKPA (the national Modern Language Teacher Association) in Lithuania:   •  News from ECML and video And also from EVOL in Estonia, showing how they have collaborated with their neighbour association in Lithuania: •  4 December 2010 Conference "Language Teacher and Teaching in the Whirl of Changes” with Eglė Šleinotienė’s Plenary “Prospects and Perspectives for Language Teachers as Members of Language Teachers’ Association” •  Egle also conducted a workshop, “The Challenge of Being a Member of a Language Teachers’ Association“. •  A bulletin can be used to provide information about ECML/LACS project/FIPLV/NBR Bulletin on the Association website (Archive 2010) •  In 2011 an EVOL conference was held focused on ECML projects. The plenary speaker was Sauli Takala, ECML consultant  •  EVOL’s 5th Anniversary Conference was held 15 November 2014 and the programme contained information about its involvement in LACS, FIPLV, and NBR activities. An article about the conference (including information about the ECML, LACS, FIPLV, NBR activities) was produced, as well as articles in the Estonian Teachers Networks Newsletter. The LACS Handbook offers many ideas for language teacher associations offering training and development activities to teachers. Collaboration is key to the LACS (Language associations and collaborative support) project, and it is developing an ongoing Directory of Language Organisations, which will help individuals, institutions or organisations to find partners for a range of activities, from conferences to research projects. Projects can be mediated in different countries by use of a range of languages to capture the interest of potential users, e.g. video clips of relevance of DOTS (Developing Online Teaching Skills) in 17 different countries.
International mediation	Some projects lend themselves to being used to support international collaboration e.g. creating and marketing an EFL Online application, as part of various Masters programmes on Applied Linguistics, Computer Science and International Business in Greece, Lithuania and Iceland (Case study 1, E-VOLLution, pp. 117-124).
National mediation	The Greek project related to the ELP-WSU (The European Language Portfolio in whole-school use) was conceived and managed by a government agency, and its purpose was to introduce the ELP to foreign language teachers and learners at primary level throughout the country. It was organised in two phases. In the first, a thousand teachers of French and German attended in-service courses on using the ELP, and in the second the ELP was piloted in classrooms. The project was evaluated using three instruments: questionnaires completed by teachers; semi-structured interviews with school principals; and observations carried out by pedagogical advisers for foreign languages. The project was warmly welcomed and fully achieved its objectives: to familiarise teachers with classroom use of the ELP, to motivate learners to be more autonomous in their learning, and to acknowledge the value of plurilingual and pluricultural learning and experience. See case study from Greece. Language teacher associations have many strategies for communicating and mediating ECML projects. See the presentation on BETA, Bulgaria. In many countries, dissemination is led by the National Contact Point. In this presentation, we can learn about the role of the Österreichisches Sprachen-Kompetenz-Zentrum in Austria. This video describes why the ‘Pluriliteracies Teaching for Learning’ approach is relevant for Italy and how her language teacher association, LEND, can help raise awareness of it. The Qualitraining project was rolled out nationally in Finland by the Finnish National Board for Education, as a carefully designed project: see here for a detailed powerpoint presentation describing how this worked.
Local or regional mediation	This case study describes the way in which the ELP (European Language Portfolio) was introduced at a local level. In Romania the introduction of the ELP has been associated with curricular reform, and the Romanian project was undertaken with the official support of the Ministry of Education as a means of introducing the ELP at local level. The project coordinator noted that at the end of the school year 2009–2010, all foreign language teachers in the project school believed that the ELP was an essential tool for language learning. Following a presentation she gave for the teachers of French in a network of bilingual schools, the Ministry of Education recommended that the ELP should be used in all schools in the network, and in time it will probably be possible to promote the use of the ELP beyond the network. The Romanian project interpreted learner autonomy as learner independence, introducing a great variety of activities to help learners to complete their ELP on their own. The project also sought to develop cooperation among teachers. It used francophone assistants to establish cultural contacts, and the school participated in several European projects and exchanges. Learners responded positively to the Language Biography but preferred working with the Dossier. See Romanian ELP-WSU case study. This video describes how a teacher educator in Austria (Tyrol) plans to disseminate the ‘Pluriliteracies Teaching for Learning’ approach.