DeCiTeL (Democratic Citizenship Teaching and Learning) is an Erasmus+ project under the Teacher Academies, gathering school communities across Europe to enhance the teaching of citizenship education at all levels from early childhood to secondary school and equipping educators to empower students to actively contribute to a society grounded in respect, empathy, open-mindedness, and mutual understanding.

Established in 2025, the project aims to strengthen teacher education and to build a sustainable alliance of teacher training institutions that can provide reference models, joint European degrees, learning materials, new curricula elements and innovative training courses for teachers of early childhood, primary and secondary schools involved in the teaching of democratic citizenship education and, more in general, in the development of social, relational and civic competences for children and adolescents.

The project is articulated in three main phases, corresponding to the three years of the project:

1) The first year will be devoted to the co-design and roadmapping of the ERASMUS+ Teacher Academy, in line with the need for a substantial preparation phase to sustain a growth trajectory and consistent processes of collaboration.

2) The second year will focus on the renewal of training supply and on the design of a core common methodology to structure joint courses, physical and virtual mobility of teachers, recognition of learning outcomes, and quality assurance systems in place.

3) The third year will be focused on the piloting of the new training supply and the testing of all innovative strategies and tools proposed to give a European dimension to teachers' education and training.

In each phase of the partners will share activities to build a substantial practical experience in transnational and multicultural work, not only among academics and experts, but involving teachers, school heads, students, parents' representatives, and local stakeholders, to create local learning ecosystems around the common interest in Citizenship Education. Local learning ecosystems will be created in each project site and will be invited to collaborate to make the Academy's impact a significant and sustainable one.

The driving assumptions for the whole project are the following:

1) Citizenship competences are not focused on knowledge; they include skills, attitudes, and values. For this reason, they have to be practiced in real contexts.

2) Schools can more effectively develop this important part of their mission if they involve local stakeholders and establish local learning ecosystems for citizenship education.

3) Teacher training in this domain should encompass new content that reflects the evolution of European society, the digital transition, the green transition, and principles of inclusivity and multiculturalism.

4) For all the previous reasons, teacher training in this domain should substantially increase its level of internationalisation. In the development of new training supplies and new methodological instruments.

The project will start from these assumptions and work in a participatory way, allowing the specificities of national contexts and stakeholders’ perspectives to intervene in a co-design process and in the evaluation of intermediate and final project results.