Bilingual Education as a driving force for the development of democratic competence

Dra. Lola López Navas – Universidad Internacional de Valencia

In September 2023, the Council of Europe published its Education Strategy 2024-2030, with the motto: “Learners First: Education for today’s and tomorrow’s democratic societies”. There is a common thread underlying the pillars of this strategy: a recognition of the centrality of language in all learning processes alongside the provision of inclusive, lifelong and high-quality language learning. Furthermore, recommendation CM/Rec(2022)1 had already highlighted the importance of the promotion of bilingual and immersion education and content and language integrated learning (CLIL) for democratic culture.

In this session, we will explore how CLIL teachers in bilingual programmes can make use of current frameworks such as the Companion Volume of the CEFR and the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) to nurture cognitive, intercultural, and linguistic skills essential for active participation in democratic life.