A project led by UVic-UCC and the UB will contribute to promoting the oral use of Catalan in schools in Catalonia

The linguistic scenario among Catalonia's school population has changed since the turn of the century as a result of major social and cultural changes and the influx of the immigrant population. Although Catalan is the normal language of instruction in the education system, the use of Catalan in schools has declined in recent years. Furthermore, a considerable number of teachers also need to update their sociolinguistic and didactic training. Given this evidence, the research project entitled "Strategies for promoting the oral use of the Catalan language inside and outside the classroom at schools in Catalonia (EFUOLC)" will design, implement and evaluate the TuCAT Programme, a training programme aimed at promoting the oral use of the Catalan language in pre-primary, primary and secondary education in Catalonia, and at schools in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area in particular.

Over a three-year period (2024-2026), the EFUOLC project will address four major current linguistic concerns: 1) the decline in the use of Catalan in schools; 2) the use of Spanish as a language of instruction by some teachers, especially at secondary schools; 3) the convergence towards Spanish among students inside and outside the classroom, and 4) the need to update the training of teachers in sociolinguistic issues and their relationship with language didactics. 

The EFUOLC project is led by Llorenç Comajoan-Colomé, a researcher in the Applied Linguistics, Didactics and Literature research group (GLOSSA) at the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC), and by Alba Ambròs Pallarès, a researcher in the History, Geography and other Social Sciences-Communication - Communication (DHIGECS-COM) research group at the University of Barcelona (UB). The other UVic-UCC researchers who are part of the team working on the EFUOLC project are: Pere Quer Aiguadé, Mariona Casas Deseuras, Eva Tresserras Casals, Vanesa Amat Castells, Mia Güell Devesa, Berta Vila Saborit and Irene Solanich Sanglas, lecturers in the Faculty of Education, Translation, Sport and Psychology at UVic-UCC.
This research is being carried out thanks to a grant of almost 300,000 Euros from a call for educational research projects at non-university levels by the Ministry of Education of the Government of Catalonia. The EFUOLC project was one of the two projects which received the highest level of financial endowments in all of Catalonia, and one of a total of seven that received funding in this first call.

A control group and an experimental group

A quasi-experimental methodology will be used in this research. In other words, a sample of schools will be selected and half will be assigned to a control group and the other half to an experimental group. The TuCAT programme to promote the use of Catalan will be applied in the schools in the experimental group. A total of sixteen public sector schools in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area will be chosen, of which eight will be in the experimental group and eight will be in the control group (four pre-primary and primary schools, and four secondary schools). The criterion used when selecting the schools will be their complexity: half of the sample will be schools in the maximum complexity category (high or very high) and the other half will be schools in the medium complexity category.

The project will be carried out in grade I5 (children aged 5 years+), in the first, fifth and sixth years of primary school, and the first and second years of secondary school. It will be implemented in grade I5, the fifth year of primary school and the first year of secondary school in the first year, and in the first and sixth year of primary school and in the second year of secondary school in the second year. 

The two groups of schools will be compared in order to ascertain the effectiveness of the TuCAT programme. First, the changes in the students' use of Catalan at the end of the period evaluated will be compared to the levels measured at the beginning of the project. Second, the changes observed will be compared between the schools in the control and experimental groups, enabling the effectiveness of the programme to be measured, after taking the changes over time into account.

Llorenç Comajoan-Colomé explains that it is an ambitious and complex project due to the quasi-experimental methodology that will be used, and he emphasises that the entire UVic-UCC and UB team are excited at being able to contribute to the training of teachers in sociolinguistic aspects, and to improving the situation of Catalan in the school environment.