The multilingual sociolinguistic landscape of Spain makes it an ideal space for the implementation and testing of educational systems whose goal is the acquisition of three languages (two official languages in the Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands, in addition to English in most of these areas). This volume provides an extensive discussion of the educational system in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC).
The chapter by Zalbide and Cenoz is an overview of bilingual education in the BAC since the 1960s. It introduces the three models of Basque education—all in Spanish, bilingual, and all in Basque—and documents their evolution. The final section on current and past challenges (e.g., use of the language and teachers’ proficiency in Basque) and potential changes is particularly interesting because it relates past and current issues in bilingual education in the BAC.
In the next chapter, Oroz and Sotés show how politics and language policy are intertwined in Navarre and its bilingual education system (with three linguistic zones and three different legal statuses for Basque and Spanish). Oroz and Sotés report on several studies that indicate that Basque is alive in schools in Navarre, but speakers are not free to use it in society because of the establishment of the three zones. The authors also remark on differences in attitudes toward Basque: Even though more and more people request the all-Basque model and support the use of Basque everywhere, some people have concerns about the use of Basque in public and would prefer to see it confined to schools.
One of the major issues in bilingual education has been the linguistic competence achieved by learners. The following two chapters deal with this issue. Sierra provides evidence of the success of bilingual education, because linguistic competence results in the BAC are higher than in other (monolingual) areas of Spain. Santiago, Lukas, Joaristi, Lizasoain, and Moyano also study academic achievement, from the perspective of the acquisition of Spanish. These authors give results on a longitudinal study on academic achievement in Spanish that shows that specific variables have an effect on the level of Spanish attained (e.g., students in the all-Basque model obtain lower results in Spanish than the rest of the students).
The chapter by Martínez de Luna and Suberbiola deals with language use in the school context and how to measure it. This study investigates which indicators can account for the use of Basque on the playground by focusing on three levels: the individual level (competence and motivation), the microlevel (situations and social networks), and the macrolevel (social domains and social representation). The results of the study show that the microlevel makes the greatest contribution to explaining language use on the playground.
The Spanish educational system in the last decade has had to accommodate a large number of immigrant children, and the Basque system has been no exception. The chapter by Etxeberria and Elosegi provides statistical data on immigrant children in Basque schools and shows that they tend to concentrate in public schools and in schools that follow the all-Spanish model. The authors argue that immigrant children go through a process of selection that tends to separate them from autochthonous children and that immigrant children who enter school late do not have the same linguistic competence in Basque as those who enter at 2–3 years of age.
The final chapter by Elorza and Muñoa begins with a brief history of the ikastolas (network of autonomous Basque schools) in the BAC and focuses on their plurilingual language project (language curriculum in Basque, English, and Spanish or French). Elorza and Muñoa report on the design of the project and the way in which it takes into account language use and teaching within and outside schools to promote not just knowledge of Basque but actual use.
All of the chapters in this volume excel at providing the reader with up-to-date research in bilingual education in the BAC and Navarre; thus, this volume will be of interest to readers who have previous knowledge of the Basque educational system as well as those interested in a general introduction to the main issues. The only weakness that affects most of the chapters that report on specific studies is that not enough information is included about how the research was conducted. Given that some of the original studies are not easily accessible (because they are written in Basque or published by local governmental departments), it would have been useful to have longer chapters that included information not only on results but also on the research methods that were employed for the studies. Finally, some repetition on the schooling models and the demolinguistic data could have been avoided. In sum, the volume is a welcome addition to the growing number of works about bilingual education and is a witness to the rich tradition of research in the BAC.
