A collection of materials for sociolinguistic education created by master’s students Izaro Arruti and Sandra Prieto has been posted online by Soziolinguistika Klusterra

Izaro Arruti and Sandra Prieto, alumnae of the Master’s program in Teacher Training in Compulsory Secondary Education, High School, Vocational Training and Language Teaching, have created a collection of materials to support sociolinguistic education. The collection was formed based on materials created for their End-of-Master’s Projects.

The work was developed for online use throughout the past year, 2022. Izaro Arruti was responsible for adapting the database. Coordination tasks fell to Soziolinguistika Klusterra, and the Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences of Mondragon University and the Federation of Basque Schools helped manage and fund the project. Computer implementation was carried out by Iametza Interactiva.

• Access the collection: www.soziolinguistika.eus/hezkuntzasl

The database, which is available to the public, makes it possible to access all sorts of materials that can be useful to both students and teachers of different ages and at different levels.

The collection includes various materials from the field of Basque sociolinguistics that can be used as an educational resource. In addition, the website adds references and links to materials for working on sociolinguistics, information about world languages and about linguistic ecology, and both theoretical and practical contents on the revitalization of the Basque language. All of these materials are classified by format, model and topic. The collection is also searchable. Behind this project lies a fundamental idea: in order to transform themselves, minority language communities must guarantee their members access to sociolinguistic knowledge.

The dissemination of sociolinguistic knowledge is strategic from the point of view of the revitalization of the Basque language given that a community that wants to transform itself and influence its environment needs tools to help it understand the relationship between language and society. To the extent that education is a mechanism for preparing people for social life, it is a basic necessity for the members of a minority language community to have access to sociolinguistic education.

Many people and organizations have created texts or publications or have given lectures in the field of sociolinguistics. This collection was created as a compilation of all those resources.

Izaro Arruti and Sandra Prieto created the collection and carried out the analysis when they were Master’s students in the Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences of Mondragon University. The adaptation of the work received first prize at the 2021 Txillardegi-Hausnartu Soziolinguistika Awards. The sociolinguistics journal Bat published the scientific article derived from this work.