Jasone Aldekoa works at the Berritzegune (innovation centre for school teachers in the Basque Autonomous Community) that covers the Arratia-Nervión and Upper Nervión area, and at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) she has defended a thesis that reflects on the experience of the Ulibarri programme in this area. Today there are about 400 schools in the BAC (Basque Autonomous Community or region) participating in this initiative which seeks to normalise Basque in the education community. The researcher has drawn positive conclusions, but has highlighted that the aims established need to be medium- or long-term ones, and that honesty is the key for this to work out satisfactorily: "When the parents realise that the teachers are acting honestly and to the benefit of their children, they support the school." The thesis is entitled Euskararen normalizazioa hezkuntzan (2000-2010): Ulibarri programa. Euskarri teorikoa, metodologia eta faktore azalgarriak (The normalisation of Basque in Education (2000-2010): the Ulibarri programme. Theoretical guidance, methodology and explanatory factors).
The Ulibarri programme is run by the Education Department of the Basque Autonomous Community Government and started during the 1996-1997 academic year. "It aims to revive the use of Basque in schools," says Aldekoa. Each school has its own LNP-Language Normalisation Project built on the basis of its own ecosystem, and Ulibarri brings all these LNPs together under the umbrella of the education system. Ulibarri is a language plan prepared by the education system and designed for schools; it encourages the use of Basque through knowledge stemming from the education system and using the LNP as the vehicle.
To carry out the research, Aldekoa has mainly used the results produced by the Branka software tool. This is one of the tools that the Ulibarri programme has at its disposal and schools use it to diagnose the language situation and find out to what point they are fulfilling their LNPs. "This diagnostic procedure gathers all kinds of information and covers the whole education community. It plays a key role in the process carried out by each of the schools," explains the author of this thesis.
The time perspective
As Aldekoa concludes, in the area and in the decade analysed, the process applied (the Ulibarri programme and the LNPs in each school) has helped to achieve the aim of normalising the use of Basque. In other words, what is set out in the theory is achieved when applied to schools. Some details in need of improvement emerge, like the need to develop a formal register in Basque and to undergo training in statistics and sociolinguistics. But the results are, when due account is taken of them, positive. "This is no more than a reflection of ten years, a brief view, and the value of the conclusions is limited to that. Nevertheless, the conclusions have been good, very good in some cases, but they have to be interpreted with caution," explains the researcher.
With the reference of a period of five or ten years, Aldekoa has detected a significant positive influence in the oral and written use of Basque. She is of the opinion that in the medium or long term this "time perspective" is indispensable when it comes to assessing the results. And they are positive because people have acted honestly: the parents have become aware of the will and good intentions of the teachers and, as a result, they, too, have become involved. "The results in the medium and long term will be valid, the time variable notwithstanding, and in this case, honesty matters more than coming up with striking short-term results. I believe the client values that honesty, that integrity. As proof of this, parents go on putting their children's names down for the Basque-medium teaching model; in their relations with the school they use whatever they know how to say in the language, whether it is a lot or a little…," adds the author of the thesis.
Aldekoa has highlighted the fact that team work is crucial in this task, precisely because the processes to revive the language cannot be approached in the short term, and work is being done in the course of an on-going generational change. In the specific case studied here, this team work has been carried out among the officers and schools in the Arratia-Nervión and Upper Nervion areas. In this respect, the researcher has testified to three main contributions in her thesis: "Firstly, the theoretical trajectory that we have built up together. Secondly, the empirical analysis we have done over ten years, each one individually within our community and as a joint initiative. And lastly, this work also enables each one of us to reflect on the results obtained in our corresponding education community and to establish future lines of work."
About the author
Jasone Aldekoa-Arana (Bilbao, 1964) holds a teacher training diploma, a degree in Philosophy and Education, a university diploma in postgraduate teacher training and a diploma in advanced studies in Psychodidactics. She wrote up her thesis under the supervision of the UPV/EHU lecturers José María Madariaga-Orbea and Xabier Isasi-Balantzategi; Madariaga belongs to the Department of Developmental Psychology and Education at the School of Teacher Training in Leioa (Bizkaia, Basque Country), and Isasi to the Department of Social Psychology and Methodology of Behavioural Sciences at the Faculty of Psychology. To produce this thesis she worked in collaboration with schools, town councils and culture officers of the 19 municipalities in the Arratia-Nervión and Upper Nervión river area. She also did verification work with the other Berritzegunes and with various education bodies in Wales, Ireland, Friesland, Scotland and Norway. Today, Aldekoa is a language normalisation adviser at the Berritzegune of Basauri-Galdakao (B06).