12 DESIGN PRINCIPLES that will guide DECITEL's work in shaping innovative training for Citizenship Education (CE) across Europe:

1) Redefining Democratic Citizenship Education (DCE). DCE requires attention to what happens in the world, and DECITEL has the ambition not only to contribute to redefine the concept (keeping in mind what has recently been studied and written in terms of global sustainability, intercultural communication, digital citizenship, peace and conflict transformation, human rights, etc), but also to design, document and consolidate a process to continue to do so and make DCE a dynamic concept, open to international debate engaging a plurality of stakeholders. It also includes making explicit which approaches are considered effective for which kind of expected learning outcomes.

2) Modularity and attention to national contexts. The Teacher Academy (TA) will work to develop an international framework to renew Initial teacher education curricula by introducing common elements of DCE, and on a common core of training modules for teachers' continuing professional development, but will consider national needs and regulation as relevant, so as to make the resulting training supply a combination of core and country-specific elements. DECITEL should support the adaptation of TA activities to different national and cultural contexts, taking into account structural and institutional challenges that may affect implementation.

3) Stimulate demand and design according to needs. The DECITEL partners will not only try to answer explicit needs expressed by teachers and future teachers, but will also try to reach out to teachers who do not see the need to get prepared/updated to new content and methods for DCE. Traditionally, CE has been strongly defined, in many countries, as a dominantly national and legislation-based subject, so many teachers tend to avoid responsibility in this field and do not express an interest or a need; nevertheless, a Whole School Approach, as defined later, requires that a majority, if not the totality of teachers, are engaged in an effective strategy of DCE.

4) Advocate and implement the value of DCE as a field of creativity and expression. If we support a substantial shift from knowledge-based education to interaction processes, DCE becomes a field for creativity and expression, much more attractive for teachers and learners.

5) Whole School Approach. DCE should be conceived as a commitment of the whole school and its stakeholders, not as a task of one or a few teachers. A systemic approach is adopted to make sustainable progress and create a supporting organisational climate for finding new opportunities and methods to develop citizenship competences across the curriculum

6) Open to non-formal education and new safe places for DCE. DCE is not the exclusive task of the school. The local community, from parents to the local administration and cultural institutions, should be integrated into the proposals that DECITEL will develop, and civil society organisations may play an important complementary role through non-formal education to be proposed in collaboration with the school or in the extra-school activities. In this context, the experimentation of unusual places for CDE may also represent a new and motivating element for teachers and learners.

7) Value-driven education. The DECITEL education and training supply will adopt a common frame of democratic and humanistic values, with specific reference to EU policy documents on democracy and the COE framework of competences for democratic culture.

8) Participatory learning processes at the centre. DCE should include a massive amount of participatory processes. Discussions, conflict transformation, mediation, project work, virtual exchange among teachers from different countries, and role games are examples of how teachers should be involved in the learning experiences that the TA will propose. Some new content of DCE is very important, but if teachers need to help learners to develop DCE competences, they have to practice these competences themselves in their training programmes.

9) Peer learning as a key approach for DCE. The existing experience of teachers should be used to develop interactions and to create new approaches to DCE. A huge reservoir of instruments, lesson schemes, and other activities can be activated while proposing new learning programmes, and collaboration will enhance teachers’ motivation to learn. The role of digital technology in supporting the international community of DECITEL teachers and learners should be explored and exploited while keeping the human interaction element at the centre of the project philosophy.

10) Innovative approaches to the assessment of DCE learning outcomes. DECITEL will experiment with innovative approaches to learning assessment, whenever possible involving learners and peers in the provision of evidence of the achievements of groups and individuals during project work and other participatory methods.

11) Joint design, joint development, virtual exchange, joint recognition. Most of the new training supply for teachers and future teachers will be co-designed by more than one partner, and, whenever possible, also the delivery of the study programmes and training modules will be implemented through the collaboration of more institutions, thus allowing the possibility of Virtual Exchange (collaborative learning and joint tasks and discussions among teachers from different countries) during international project work. The Academy will progressively develop and deliver its own certification system, initially based on e-badges; through a step-by-step approach, the Academy will seek full recognition by the national teachers' training.

12) Keep the project open to research developments and aware of/relevant to policy developments. Although the “main job” of DECITEL is the provision of innovative education and training for teachers, the project will keep a careful eye on research developments, trying to inform its current activities with the most recent and relevant results; at the same time, DECITEL will try to quickly disseminate its results and draw lessons that may inspire future teachers' policies at national, EU, and international level by connecting with the relevant policy makers and international organisations.

With these principles, DECITEL strives to shape the future of Citizenship Education.