The BLETEACH project addresses two crucial needs in teachers´ continuous professional development (CPD) in most European countries: 1. A general (structural) problem: The unsatisfying structures of teachers' continuous professional development (CPD) in the EU. 2. A specific (content related) problem: the lack of expertise of secondary school teachers, i.e. content area teachers required to address the problem of low literacy skills of children and adolescents in many European countries. Ad 1) In many European countries the time for face-to-face learning in teachers´ CPD is limited to a few days per year and thus privileges “one-shot-approaches” which are not effective in changing classroom practice (as research has proven). Therefore this project will explore and analyse the most promising formats in blended learning offers in CPD in order to develop and implement a blended learning course (BLC) for secondary teachers (and teacher trainers). Ad 2) The PISA studies carried out by the OECD (2000 ff.) revealed severe deficits in basic literacy skills among adolescents (15 year olds): In European countries, one out of five adolescents lack the necessary basic literacy skills to cope with literacy requirements in education, training, workplace, societal participation and lifelong learning. One reason for these deficits of adolescents in literacy is seen in the lack of a systematic reading instruction in mother tongue and content area education in secondary schools. International research found that understanding content area texts (or disciplinary texts) should be taught in all subjects and all grades systematically. Unfortunately in most European countries secondary teachers mainly study their subjects and subject-related didactics during pre-service education but do not get trained in content area literacy. The term content area literacy (CAL) refers to teachers’ competence to deal with reading / writing and learning instruction not only on the elementary level in the language arts classes, but in all subjects and all school levels. But in most European countries, content area teachers are not trained to fulfill this task. Thus BLETEACH pursues two main objectives: a. A general objective: modernizing structures of teacher education by integrating digital learning opportunities into teachers´ professional development b. A specific objective: developing the model of a Blended-Learning-course in Content Area Literacy to be included into the regular course programme of 40 European Teacher Training Centres. The main target groups of BLETEACH are 1) secondary teachers of all school subjects and 2) teacher trainers / in-service training institutions in teacher education. Those two target groups will be addressed directly by the BLETEACH project whereas the ultimate target group shall be the students in secondary schools – and especially adolescents struggling with literacy standards – who will benefit from the newly gained expertise and engagement of their teachers in providing content area literacy instruction. The Belteach-Consortium consists of 7 partner institutions working in different countries and in different fields of teacher education: - Universities with an expertise in educational sciences and initial teacher education, - teacher training centres with an expertise in teachers’ professional development, - providers of teacher training and of IT-offers. 47 associated partners: In addition the Belteach-Consortium cooperates with a total of 47 “associated partners: i.e. others training centres and schools. Cooperation will be arranged in a series of 3 Mulitplier Events per country and on the basis of an internal learning platform. Main results of the project: - Research Report about International best practice in blended learning in Teachers´ CPD - National reports on good practice examples and concepts in blended learning in teachers´ CPD from Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Romania (and Russia, self financed partner) - Handbook of success factors in blended learning offers for teachers´ in-service-training - Blended Learning Course in CAL for Secondary Teachers and Teacher Trainers – Producing the master version (English) and five national versions. - Concept for implementation of CAL course, including certification and accreditation requirements.