The European Profiling Grid – Project background

The project ran from 2011 to October 2013 and was funded by the EU under the Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation scheme.

The project brought an important Eaquals resource into the public domain enhancing the profile of Eaquals internationally.

Aim and outcomes

The project’s aim was to improve the quality and effectiveness of language training by providing an instrument that would focus on language teaching competences and aid the mobility of language teachers. The main objective of this project was to test the pilot grid originally developed by Eaquals, among employers of language teachers, teacher trainers and teachers themselves, in order to develop a definitive version of the Grid and a User Guide. The outcomes of the project were:

• The European Profiling Grid (version 1.0) – in Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, and Turkish, with a glossary
• A User Guide in English, French, German and Spanish
• An interactive electronic version, the e-Grid in English, French, German and Spanish.

The EPG is a significant contribution to the raising of awareness of language teaching competences and teaching quality, as well as an important aid to language teacher development and training.

Project partners

The project was co-ordinated by the Centre international d’études pédagogiques (CIEP), France, and involved the following organisations:

Main partners:

• CIEP
• Eaquals
• British Council, UK
• Instituto Cervantes, Spain
• Bulgarian Association for Quality Language Services (Optima), Bulgaria
• Goethe-Institut e.V., Germany

Secondary partners:

• CEBS, Austria
• ELS-Bell, Poland
• Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Sabanci University, Turkey
• University for Foreigners of Siena, Italy

Further development and dissemination

At the end of the project Eaquals and other interested partners, notably the Goethe Institut and Instituto Cervantes, continued to develop and promote the EPG and the e-Grid. In 2014 the e-Grid was translated into Ukrainian and Chinese, and preparations were made for further translations into Arabic and Portuguese.

A number of workshops and presentations on the EPG were run by Eaquals, notably in France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK, as well as in Australia (via video link) and through a British Council webinar recorded at the end of 2013.

Eaquals now manages websites related to the EPG and in 2015 conducted a survey of users of the EPG as preparation for an international symposium in April 2016.