Development of Plurilingualism and Interculturalism as an Objective of Project-Based L2 Learning in Primary School Education

Abstract

In 2017 the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Serbia approved Standards of Competence for Foreign Languages in Formal Primary Education, a document that provides criteria for defining students’ achievement at the end of primary education. In order to guarantee a better implementation of the Standards in primary school education, the Institute for Education Quality and Evaluation created a largescale on-line training program in 2018. In addition to specific objectives in terms of better understanding of the nature and purpose of standards of competence for foreign languages, the program aimed at raising awareness of the importance of pluri-lingual and intercultural education in primary school. The final task of the program was for the participants to design a mini-research project that would enable inclusion of students of different school languages and development of transversal competences. Here, we explore the participants’ concept of plurilingual/intercultural education by analyzing their school-project proposals according to a criterion that focuses on the content and process of project proposals. The results reveal the participants’ epistemologies that are relevant for the development of pluri-lingual and intercultural competence in the context of formal foreign education.