Citizenship education is now found on the school curriculum in many parts of the world as countries increasingly recognise the role it plays in preparing students for life in the 21st century. Proficiency in more than one language has become an essential skill for citizens of a global community as the spread of information and communication technologies makes it possible to both access information placed on the web and to communicate with colleagues and partners across the world. The challenge facing schools and policy makers today is how to integrate the knowledge, values and skills of citizenship education with language learning.

This seminar will offer the participants the opportunity to:

• explore together the relationship between citizenship and language teaching and learning
• understand current thinking on citizenship education in a global context
• relate pedagogical good practice in language teaching with active citizenship
• develop appropriate practical action plans based on shared principles

The event will be interactive and participatory with an emphasis on sharing examples of good practice from the participants’ own contexts. It will build on the British Council international seminar held in March 2003:  Language teaching and citizenship in international contexts and will use selected chapters from the publication which resulted from that seminar, ‘Citizenship and Language Learning: international perspectives’ (Osler, A. and H. Starkey, 2005), as important preparatory material.