How can we make plurilingual competence more tangible and empower learners as participants in ‘glocal’ communities? This talk discusses the development and piloting of an E-portfolio and platform for plurilingual action-oriented learning, as a feature of LINCDIRE (LINguistic and Cultural DIversity Reinvented), a 3 year international collaborative research project.
The LITE E-portfolio (Language Integration Through E-Portfolio) is a key initiative of LINCDIRE (LINguistic and Cultural DIversity Reinvented), a 3 year international collaborative SSHRC research project between Canada and France, building a community of practice to enhance linguistic and cultural awareness in education. The project to develop LITE employed a process of iterative design to re-think how engagement with communicative competence in multiple languages can be supported with an online portfolio and learning space, in a way that acknowledges and supports the developing and interacting plurilingual profiles of learners. This approach was grounded conceptually in the recent update and extension of the Common European Framework of Reference, itself an international project involving contributors and validation worldwide. In particular the CEFR update reinforces the concept of plurilingual competence, as the unique repertoire empowering individuals as participants in ‘glocal’ communities, providing new scales of calibrated descriptors in this area. The development of the LITE platform was closely tied with the aims of the LINCDIRE project to provide action-oriented tools for collaborative learning and self-reflection in a space where the individual’s plurilingual journey is central. In the context of the Canadian piloting project this included the development of portfolio tools designed to support majority languages of schooling, minority migrant languages and first nations languages revitalization. A key aspect of piloting was the ongoing consultation of teaching practitioners on the experience of using the LITE platform with learners in context, and its potential impact as a focal point for building a community of plurilingual practice both within and between institutions. This paper and presentation gives an account of the rich and interactive process of designing and piloting the platform, with lessons learned and key implications for implementing a consciously blended approach to plurilingual pedagogy.
