Teacher training perspectives for virtual exchange: Initial actions from the E-LIVE European project

• Main Authors: Wigham, Ciara R., Jauregi-Ondarra, Kristi
• Other Authors: Activité, Connaissance, Transmission, éducation (ACTé ), Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA)
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: virtual exchange; in-service teacher training; pre-service teacher training; [SHS.LANGUE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Linguistics; [SHS.EDU]Humanities and Social Sciences/Education; Iceland
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04388506

International audience Virtual Exchange (VE) is a lingua-culture learning-teaching practice that fosters meaningful exchanges between learners in geographically distant locations and from diverse lingua-cultural backgrounds through internet-based tools and innovative online pedagogies (O’Dowd, 2018). E-LIVE (Engaging Languages in Intercultural Virtual Exchange) is a three-year project (2021-2024) funded by the Erasmus+ Cooperation partnerships in school education (KA220-SCH). The project targets primary and secondary school education and teacher training institutions. The project consortium gathers a team of specialists in CALL from the Netherlands, France and Spain and school teachers experienced in virtual exchange and collaborates with 32 associate partner schools and teacher training institutions. In line with the Digital Education Action Plan (DG EAC, 2021), the key project objectives are to:-innovate and enrich language teacher training programmes in higher education to develop digital literacy skills and organization, pedagogical and intrercultural competences of (trainee) teachers by mainstreaming virtual exchange projects within teacher training programmes;-enrich and make foreign language teaching programmes at primary and secondary level schools more meaningful by offering learners opportunities to engage in virtual exchanges with peers from other cultures;-exploit the possibilities that online interactive tools (virtual and augmented reality) offer with a view to enriching and diversifying teaching for intercultural language learning.This presentation will begin with a brief overview of the E-LIVE project and will then focus two of the project’s initial actions. Firstly, we will report on the results of a questionnaire and a series of focus groups conducted to better understand the teaching beliefs, experiences, conditions, and training needs (related to VE pedagogy, digital literacy skills and intercultural mediation) of a heterogeneous group of 25 language teachers from five European countries ...