Introducing DILECTINGS. Digital Literature and Literature Digital Reading in L2/FL teaching and learning for a sustainable, intercultural, inclusive education

Digital literature—literature intended here as authentic materials with cultural value—is an engaging and interactive narrative form delivered via digital media, encompassing the language of books, films, web pages, radio, etc. The field of research addressing the impact of digital literature on students’ reading activities, though more and more appealing, is still under investigated (Carioli 2015); hence the first need this project meets is to provide an organic and systematic overview on the state of the research on Digital Literature Literacy (DLL), namely how scientific literature has so far considered the influence of these many types of texts on the way readers read. Eventually, in line with the Bologna and Open Education principles, the advice of the Council of Europe on strategic competences for Life-long Learning, the Council Conclusions on European Teacher and Trainers for the Future of May 2020, the 2020 Commission’s Communication on Achieving the European Education Area by 2025, and the Commission’s Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027), the project aims to implement tools to promote digital literature in schools and to enhance reading skills both for native speakers and to Foreign Language/ Second Language students in different European countries. As digital instruments change the dynamic relationship between reader, text, and factors influencing the reading process and hence comprehension, the education systems need updated and available tools and structures to help teachers (and learners) to cope with the implications of digital texts fruition in the pedagogy of reading, especially in multilingual situations. Both teachers and students need guidelines and support to apply digital reading (reading texts from the technological apparatus such as the screen of smart phones, tablets, or computers either online or offline) to literature so as to: foster teaching of reading; teach both language and literature by reading with digital tools; contribute to fostering intercultural understanding and social inclusion; being able to develop/consolidate ICT competences and skills (see Council of Europe key competences framework). These lines of inquiry intersect the main issue of the making of the readers, and of what feeds and shapes their imaginary, their capacity of making hypothesis, predicting, figuring the world from a different perspective, imagining, but also decoding their actual context and expanding their learning and competences. DILECTINGS aims to promote and scale-up Digital Literature Literacy (DLL) and Literature Digital Reading (LDR) Skills in European schools through achievement, assessment and exchange of specific digital competences in both educators and students. The project will implement sustainable infrastructure, resources and guidelines for the enhancement of DLL and LDR Skills in European schools, as to enhance DLL and LDR by improving ICT Skills, along with reading, language and culture competences in both teachers and pupils at the primary and lower-secondary level, possibly to smooth the passage from the Primary to the Secondary cycle of education.