The Council of Europe³ stresses that

the digital environment provides an unprecedented means for people to express themselves using different languages and opens new opportunities to enhance language learning and to support and promote languages not taught in the curriculum, all of which underpins the culture of democracy that enables democratic institutions to function properly

Within this context, dimension 3 focuses on the development of competences relevant to pluralistic approaches in the digital domain - to be taken in a broad sense, for example, image and sound processing, online resources such as dictionaries and translators, communication tools, platforms and websites, including participative ones, various applications, tools using artificial intelligence, etc., all at the service of didactic activities. These rapidly evolving technologies require competence in analysing new technical novelties – along with new forms of multilingual and multimodal usage - which can help to enrich one’s didactic repertoire for pluralistic approaches and reinforce critical use of the multilingual and intercultural resources available.

Some of the descriptors in other dimensions, such as Dimension 5, dedicated to didactic and pedagogical competences, already incorporate elements relating to digital technologies and therefore partially overlap with those found in Dimension 3. However, it seemed necessary to maintain a separate dimension dedicated to teacher competences in using digital technologies in connection with pluralistic approaches, given the significance of these considerations and potentials in the current world.

These competences have been grouped together based on their relevance in effectively using pluralistic approaches, enabling learners to develop the competences proposed by FREPA and expand their plurilingual and intercultural repertoire.

The competences in this dimension run through all aspects of a teacher’s work, enabling them to implement pluralistic approaches within educational situations while taking into account the characteristics and resources of their teaching environment.

• Planning a teaching/learning process using pluralistic approaches – This includes descriptors focusing on the competence in defining objectives for plurilingual and intercultural education, analysing the linguistic and cultural plurality of learners in order to make pedagogical and didactic decisions, to organise teaching as a multilingual space by offering plurilingual and intercultural experiences to learners.
• Managing a teaching/learning process using pluralistic approaches – This sub-dimension includes descriptors related to competence in using pluralistic approaches, taking into account learners' linguistic and cultural repertoires, as well as their learning experience, with the aim of motivating them towards new learning and fostering their overall development, in a learning atmosphere that embraces linguistic and cultural diversity.
• Evaluating and assessing learners’ progress and achievements developed through the use of pluralistic approaches – This involves descriptors focusing on the competence in defining assessment items corresponding to the plurilingual and intercultural learning objectives targeted by pluralistic approaches, in organising assessment methods in alignment with the goals of these approaches, and in providing learners with feedback that promotes the development of plurilingual and intercultural competence.
• - Reflection on the implementation of pluralistic approaches – This sub-dimension includes descriptors describing the competence in reflecting on the results of implementing pluralistic approaches, in critically analysing one's own didactic action and in identifying areas of linguistic and methodological insecurity related to the use of pluralistic approaches. This reflection allows teachers to address issues and improve their practices . (Also see Dimension 7 - Competences for professional learning and development).

Considering the specific process of professional learning that the use of pluralistic approaches requires, the descriptors within this dimension are structured at two levels.

At the first level, the elements making up dimension 7 are specified, taking into account the specific features of each of the dimensions 1 to 6.

Dimension 1	Competence 7.1
Commitment to values and principles for the use of pluralistic approaches	Competence in developing one’s own values and principles regarding linguistic and cultural diversity and plurilingual and intercultural education
Dimension 2	Competence 7.2
Competences in communication specific to pluralistic approaches	Competence in developing the plurilingual and intercultural dimensions of one's communicative repertoire

However, these first-level competences still cover very broad areas, which, to guide educational work, require refinement and greater specificity at a second level.

This more detailed treatment could lead to very long and unmanageable lists of sub-competences. In order to avoid this pitfall, the framework proposes a limited number of examples of descriptors to which users can add their own formulations, drawing on existing formulations, according to priorities within their specific contexts.

To select these examples, the intention was to choose from among the vectors ⁴ of professional development described in the existing literature, those which may be of particular relevance for teacher education in the specific field of pluralistic approaches.

The following two vectors were selected:

• mobilisation of a reflective approach (vector 1) ;
• will for individual and contextual transformation (vector 2)

The choice made stems from the recognition that pluralistic approaches today constitute an innovation that breaks away from many still prevailing conceptions. For teachers or future teachers, they often involve a profound shift in their own convictions and those commonly accepted within the educational culture of their context. This is particularly pertinent for the way multilingual/plurilingual and intercultural communication functions, for the language teaching/learning process and for the role of languages/cultures in other disciplines.

For each first-level competence (such as competences 7.1 and 7.2 in the example above), the reference framework proposes one example of a descriptor that aligns with the perspective of the first vector (the reflective approach) and another descriptor aligned with the second vector (will for individual and contextual transformation), as illustrated here for competence 7.1 :

It will be noticed that concerning vector 2, we are not dealing with a competence, but an attitude (A). This is due to the very nature of the vector: "will" is not a competence, but an attitude.