Abstract.European Union educational mobility programs have traditionally been oriented not only toward the promotion of intercultural communicative competence, but also toward the assimilation of European civic values. Although the linguistic and sociocultural effects of European educational mobilities have been comprehensively studied, their efficacy in supporting active citizenship and the emergence of shared community values remains largely unexplored territory. Likewise, no prior research has attempted to systematize the diverse conceptualizations of European civic and democratic values alluded to in mobility projects addressing this topic. To bridge this gap, this article examines qualitative data from EU school mobility projects whose stated purpose, either uniquely or combined with other educational objectives, is the promotion of European civic awareness and democratic values among adult participants in a Spanish region. The methodological approach adopted for the compilation of the corpus of project records, data extraction, and processing follows the principles of qualitative comparative analysis. The results point to a broad operationalization of European civic and democratic themes in the analyzed projects. Furthermore, a coexistence is observed between a small number of specific proposals for deliberate educational intervention aimed at promoting democracy and European citizenship abroad, and a predominant stance postulating the spontaneous acquisition of such values through participation in transnational learning activities directed toward the development of communicative, intercultural, and digital competences.
How to cite. Fernández-Corbacho, A., & Cores Bilbao, E. (2023). European democratic values and communicative competence on mobility programs targeting adults. Studies in the Education of Adults, 55(1), 138–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/02660830.2022.2095750
