In January 2024, the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) launched its 7th medium-term programme of activities, “Language education at the heart of democracy”. This article looks at the progress of the “CLIL teaching materials for developing 21st century competences”project.
The project’s overall aim is to create CLIL teaching materials for different language and subject combinations that help secondary school learners develop 21st-century competences. These are needed to engage critically with the kind of global challenges addressed through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
After one year, the project team has composed a first draft of a teacher’s guide and teaching materials for each one of the United Nations' 16 sustainable development goals.
The teacher’s guide has a triple aim:
(1) to clarify for teachers what competences they need to be able to promote 21st-century competences in CLIL learners studying materials relating to the United Nations’ sustainability goals;
(2) to explain the pedagogical principles underlying the developed teaching materials;
(3) to offer a set of guidelines (template) so that teachers can develop their own teaching materials based on the sample materials offered in the teacher’s guide.
The team is in the process of fine-tuning the teacher’s guide and teaching materials and will share them with a group of teachers, pedagogical advisors and teacher educators at the ECML workshop scheduled in September 2025.
Lies Sercu
