Bridging the Gap with MOOCs Integrating Languages, Literacies and Content in Plurilingual, Refugee-Receiving Classrooms

This article presents conceptual analysis of two multilingual MOOCs developed within the ILLS‑PEC project as a design intervention intended to reframe subject‑teacher education for plurilingual, refugee‑receiving classrooms. Anchored in Pluriliteracies Teaching for Deeper Learning (PTDL), multiliteracies and Fiction and Content Unified Learning (FACUL), it examines the course’s design principles, multilingual task architectures and emerging credentialing mechanisms. At the level of provision, the MOOCs are designed to address a gap in teacher education by reducing linguistic and infrastructural barriers to participation and offering certification of course completion to diverse groups of educators, including those with refugee backgrounds. Informed by participatory design involving stakeholders in partner countries, including input from refugee‑community representatives, the courses incorporate accessibility and equity considerations from the outset. Pedagogically, they seek to move beyond monolingual, transmission‑oriented models towards design‑oriented teaching practices that position learners’ full linguistic repertoires, affective experiences and multimodal resources as central to subject learning. At system level, the project is conceptualised asa mediating layer between policy aspirations and everyday practice, offering a potentially scalable model of equity‑oriented professional learning whose implementation and impact require future empirical evaluation of impact.