Innovade in workshop "Literacy: Beyond reading and writing"

This event brought together coordinators of Comenius centralized multilateral projects and networks, Comenius decentralized projects, coordinators of other LLP actions (Leonardo, Grundtvig, Erasmus) and projects of DG Research. It provided a forum to share experience and knowledge with other relevant actors in Literacy, Maths, and Science. The specific objectives of the meeting were:

• To exchange ideas, best practices and evidence-based conclusions on Literacy, Maths and Science and to facilitate networking between participants;
• To contribute to the development of EU policy in these fields, inform future funding decisions and identify ways whereby future EU policy in these fields, inform future funding decisions and identify ways whereby future EU policy work may draw more systematically on results from projects and networks;
• To give representatives from projects and networks the opportunity to meet experts and policy makers in the relevant fields as well as representatives from DG EAC and EACEA.

Within this meeting, multiple workshops were run to examine issues in more detailed. CARDET participated in the Workshop with title "Literacy: Beyond Reading and Writing". According to EU documents, literacy is “the ability to read, write, interpret and critically evaluate multimodal texts in order to fully function in a modern society.” One aspect on which the workshop was focused, had to do with the role of new technologies on literacy and knowledge building. The key questions which guided the workshop and later discussions were:

1. How will increasing digitisation affect the demand for literacy skills in the future?
2. Which kinds of literacy skills are more needed in a digital society and which skills are likely to lose in importance? How should education systems anticipate these changes?
3. Should the use of ICT be encouraged in the learning of reading and writing? How can teachers be motivated to use more ICT in classroom and which benefits can this bring on students' achievement and motivation in reading and writing literacy?
4. How can introduction of digital resources be harnessed as an occasion to change pedagogical practice, to promote more inclusive approaches and to differentiate teaching?
5. Which pedagogical innovations could contribute to diminishing the share of low achievers in reading literacy? How can such innovations be supported through educational policies? How can partnerships with societal players (businesses, trade unions, social services, NGOs and charities) support the renewal of literacy in Europe?

The issues discussed are at the core of Education in the 21st century and in complete alignment with CARDET’s work during the last 10 years. Following the individual workshop deliberations, all participants gathered to discuss the ways in which educational policies, including curriculum, assessment, teacher education and school development policies contribute to integrating a broader concept of literacy, with a clear multi-literacy dimension and stronger links to media literacy. Participants also discussed the future EU education programmes and how we can ensure a higher impact of project results at policy level, at European or national scale.