"<< Background >>The APATCHE project is grounded in a clear need, in the partners’ institutions and all over Europe, which is the result of 3 concurring factors: (1) As many European policy documents acknowledge, competence in several languages is a ""conditio sine qua non"" of mobility, cooperation and inclusion, which are key to good higher education (HE) in Europe. However, EU-funded training programs were mainly aimed at secondary education. Projects involved with HE were aimed at creating principles, descriptive frameworks and benchmarks. Little to no effort was undertaken to train HE teachers in the actual use of plurilingual approaches. (2) Scientific evidence shows that plurilingualism has many advantages. Plurilingual individuals do better in society (they are better at stress-management, team-work, problem-solving and learning abilities, get better jobs and incomes, are happier and have fewer chances of neurodegenerative disease) and in language learning (plurilingual approaches generate increased learning efficiency, autonomy and motivation). (3) Nonetheless – although there is currently no empirically validated data, which is a knowledge gap the APATCHE project seeks to fill – awareness of plurilingual approaches in HE is low and language learning is still conceived under monolingual approaches, either by teaching L2 in isolation, or by considering it to be a non-problematic vehicle for knowledge transfer (as can be the case with EMI – English as a medium for instruction). As a result, the plurilingual competence of HE staff needs to be developed, in order to prepare universities in Europe for the challenges of (a) increasingly international student audiences; (b) the increasing weight of the dominant Anglo-American monolingual view on science which isolates scientific knowledge from Europe’s multilingual diversity; (c) as well as the need to foster and develop a multilingual, multicultural ethos in our students, as a prerequisite for the EU’s diversity and inclusion policies. Therefore, the project’s target group, in the partner institutions which we consider to be a laboratory for further implementation in HE throughout Europe, is composed of: (1) a primary target group, i.e., language teachers in HE, for whom we will provide state-of-the-art publications usable in the HE classroom, curriculum recommendations, a descriptive scale of plurilingual competence usable as learning outcomes, and an open online training course. Although primarily aimed at language teachers, this target group includes all teachers in HE, of whatever knowledge domain, confronted with various languages in the internationalized, multilingual classroom; (2) our secondary target group, specifically with regard to the policy and curriculum recommendations we shall produce, comprises HE curriculum and policymakers, at the institutional level (rectors, deans, presidents of curriculum commissions), as well as in local, national and European educational politics; (3) Finally, we firmly believe that an indirect impact of the program in the long-term may be that language students in HE that will have been confronted with more efficient and motivating plurilingual approaches during their training, may consequently adopt these in their own future teacher careers, rather than repeat the monolingual approaches they are learning today. This way, the project tackles tomorrow’s need for teacher training at its source, i.e., by having pre-service teachers profit, for their future careers, from the training provided to their trainers.<< Objectives >>The aim of the APATCHE project is expressed by its acronym and title. It is to “Add Plurilingual Approaches to language Teacher Competences in Higher Education”, by raising awareness through various publications, dissemination events, a methodology for curriculum development and an online training course. Plurilingual approaches to language learning and teaching are approaches that value all languages present in the increasingly multilingual international classroom in higher education (HE) as a single, comprehensive set of competences. The APATCHE project wishes to raise awareness of the importance of such a plurilingual approach and to provide the necessary means of introducing them in HE all over Europe. To that end, we shall try to answer three questions, namely What is it?; Why is it needed?; and How can we implement it?(1) With respect to the ‘What?’ question, our objective is to raise awareness of, and to collect, provide and disseminate knowledge on the importance of plurilingual approaches in HE (and knowledge construction in general), embracing national languages as well as English as the predominant lingua academica and allowing for learners to develop language skills more effectively, while increasing autonomy and motivation, and fostering positive intercultural attitudes; the advantages of plurilingual learning as compared to monolingual approaches; the importance, for reasons of dissemination and societal impact, of scientific knowledge development in local and national languages as well as in English; necessary skills and attitudes to be developed and fostered; ways to develop these.(2) With respect to the “Why?” question, our objective is to raise awareness of the need for, and usefulness of plurilingual approaches in HE, both in (foreign) language classrooms and in multilingual classrooms in which languages are not in themselves the object of instruction, but a means of deepening conceptual knowledge, of enhancing student motivation and learning effectivity, and of increasing the ability for future graduates to communicate scientific knowledge to citizens and create future impact in European societies. (3) Related to the “How?” question, our third objective is to create ways of allowing HE teachers to familiarize themselves with possible methods and scenarios to bring plurilingual approaches into the HE classroom and to acquire the necessary competences to do so.Consequently, the projects’ concrete objectives and project results allowing to achieve those objectives are the following:oTo collect and to disseminate by means of publications, both scientific and in laymen’s terms, usable in the HE classroom, the currently lacking state-of-the-art regarding plurilingual approaches and methodologies – by means of a synthesis of scientific knowledge and a review of contributions by past and ongoing EU-funded projects;oTo provide by means of a Europe-wide APATCHE survey, and to disseminate the currently lacking empirical quantitative and qualitative data regarding awareness, knowledge and use of plurilingual approaches in HE in Europe;oTo provide, on that double basis, and to disseminate the currently lacking knowledge- and evidence-based curriculum and policy recommendations for the implementation of plurilingual curricula in HE; oTo provide, on the same basis, and to disseminate the currently lacking descriptive scale of plurilingual competence (knowledge, attitudes and values, skills) specifically for HE; oTo provide the currently lacking online platform for teachers in HE to acquaint themselves with plurilingual competence (answering three central questions, namely What is it? Why is it needed? and How can we implement it?) and to familiarize themselves with the necessary skills and attitudes and with possible educational scenarios to implement successful plurilingual approaches.<< Implementation >>Project activities are open to the public and free of charge. They will be carried out throughout the project lifespan and will include:- a kick-off event in Kaunas in January 2022;- Multiplier Events, open to all, organised in all partner institutions, in Dec. 2022 (Antwerp), June 2023 (Kaunas), January 2023 (Warsaw), June 2024 (Faro), and Dec. 2024 (Milan). During multiplier events, project results are revealed and discussed by specialists in the field, as well as the public. All multiplier events will be broadcast live via the APATCHE YouTube channel, open to all and free of charge;- a survey, launched in Dec. 2022, repeated in 2024 and 2027, in which all HE teachers throughout Europe, either teaching languages or being confronted with multilingual international classrooms are invited to participate; - online open-access publications on the APATCHE webpages- scientific publications in open access- conference papers delivered and scientific articles published by team members- and the creation of a single, comprehensive information hub online (www.apatche.eu), in which all necessary knowledge and tools for successfully implementing plurilingual approaches, thus enhancing learner efficacy, autonomy and motivation while fostering positive intercultural attitudes, will be united.<< Results >>As explained above, our project aims at Adding Plurilingual Approaches to HE, by producing a set of results (referred to as Intellectual Outcomes, IOs) raising awareness of and providing training in such approaches: (1) IO1 comprises a number of publications, both scientific and in laymen’s terms, usable in HE. These publications raise awareness, provide the currently lacking state-of-the-art, as well as materials for a training course (see IO3-4-5 below). All publications are disseminated through multiplier events (ME) in all partner countries and are published in open access, on the APATCHE webpage (IO6, “w”) or with scientific editors (“ed”). IO1.1 – A Vademecum of terminology (w) which defines key concepts related to plurilingual learning methodology; IO1.2 – The Plurilingualism Reader (ed) composed of a critical introduction and a set of 10 to 12 seminal papers, published with Routledge or Multilingual Matters; IO1.4 – Policy and curriculum recommendations (w) additionally disseminated through the ELC, CERCLES, CIUTI and EASSH networks, as well as to local, national and European stakeholders, within academia and the political world; IO1.5 – a collective monograph (ed) presenting all project results, submitted for publication at project completion, in golden open access, aiming at a decisive impact as it will be the state-of-the-art on which to build all future work on plurilingual approaches in HE; In addition, the project will generate and publish new scientifically validated data on languages in HE in Europe, by means of IO1.3 – quantitative and qualitative analysis of a substantial set of data obtained by a Europe-wide survey launched at the ELC conference in Dec 2024. The results of the analysis will be part of IO1.5 but will also be disseminated at scientific conferences and in papers presented to Sustainable multilingualism, the Journal of European language policy, the International Journal of Multilingual Education and the International Journal of Multilingualism. As part of the project’s impact, in the long run, partners commit themselves to repeating the same survey in Nov 2024 and Nov. 2027, thus producing a longitudinal study (IO1.3bis), disseminated through the same means, that measures project impact after 3 and after 6 years. (2) Second, the project provides a descriptive scale of plurilingual competence (w) usable as HE learning outcomes (IO2); this scale will be published on the APATCHE webpage (IO6) and disseminated through relevant networks. (3) Finally, based on all previous IO, the project provides didactic materials and training possibilities needed, in the form of a multilingual three-part open online training course (IO3-4-5) related to the questions what plurilingual approaches are (4h. Module 1); why they are needed in HE (2h. Module 2); and how they can be brought about (6h. Module 3). Participants will be invited to submit materials of their making, so that the course pages become a repertoire of educational scenarios and examples in many languages and will receive certification by means of a microcredential. The project results and impact we aim at with these IOs are: -a rise in awareness of plurilingual approaches and their importance in HE, through the promotion and dissemination of knowledge; -a rise in the implementation of plurilingual teaching and curricula in HE in Europe, by providing the necessary tools on which such approaches can be built; -the creation of new, innovative teaching practices and inclusive approaches in HE to linguistic and cultural diversity, that contribute to building inclusive societies in Europe based on plurilingual, pluricultural values to be associated with internationalization; -the availability and dissemination, including after project completion, of relevant publications, scientific evidence, tangible training materials, and a repertoire of good practices and learning scenarios, in English and in a large set of national languages."