API education Forum

API Education Forum is an international community of academics, teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, administrators, and policy makers in the broad field of language and literacy education. This community is dedicated to the promotion of Action-oriented, Plurilingual and Intercultural (API) Education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels as well as in adult education, including the integration of migrants within these sectors. API’s work is grounded in promoting and protecting linguistic and cultural diversity, which is crucial to equitable, inclusive, quality education. It is also vital for developing mutual understanding and overcoming barriers in order to collaborate and thrive together in today’s complex world. 

API aims to provide a forum to bring together the latest research in Language Education, innovative projects across different contexts, and cutting-edge resources in order to support policy development and implementation. A crucial resource for the realization of API Education is the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) project. This ongoing and open-ended project includes the CEFR 2001 publication and its 2020 extended edition – the CEFR Companion Volume.  

The Forum aims to become an interactive, collaborative space for members to: 

• discuss aspects of action-oriented, plurilingual and intercultural (API) education;  

• reflect on the challenges and opportunities they present at the classroom, institutional and policy-making levels;  

• share practical examples of API implementation and other resources; 

• draw attention to and/or collaborate in both relevant academic research and also development projects; 

• create, share and disseminate resources, including exemplar scenarios/tasks and/or training modules; 

• support the further development of teacher (pre-service and in-service) competences for API education. 

Activities within the API Education Forum aim to contribute to the further development of the following key areas within the field of Language Education: 

• awareness-raising and networking concerning projects and initiatives relevant to the CEFRCV and API education;  

• design and development of curricula and resources that promote inclusivity, develop student agency,  and foster linguistic and cultural repertoires; 

• coverage of the CEFR project and API education in pre-service and in service professional  development;  

• development of teaching and learning materials; 

• promotion of languages across the curriculum, the development of partial competences in multiple languages, and the use of multiple languages in the classroom; 

• support for language education and education for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, and decolonialization; 

• exploration of the potential of multimodality, technology, and large language models (such as ChatGPT) for API education; 

• investigation of the role of mediation in plurilingual education, not only as a tool for the language learning classroom, but also as a cross-curricular resource; 

• encouragement of communities of practice for teachers working with API education at a local and regional level; 

• collaboration between institutions and educational sectors at the local and regional level.