Citizenship education in Basque and French language classes in Northern Basque immersive schools: a case of powerful knowledge and epistemic quality

The paper discusses first findings of the EduLing project which is concerned with citizenship education and language education in immersive schools, in CLIL and mainstream classes in France, Austria and Germany. The paper deals with citizenship education in language teaching and learning in the Northern Basque Ikastola and discusses two lessons and the perspectives of their participants, a Basque language lesson and a French language lesson. The data collection of this qualitative, comparative case study comprises classroom observation and videography as well as interviews with teachers and groups of students. The analysis and interpretation of the data applies a criteria-based reconstructive analysis of language lessons, and the interviews are interpreted with the documentary method. The findings promise profitable insights concerning the integration of citizenship education and language education based on powerful knowledge, epistemic quality and the Bildungsgang (trajectory of development) of students.