Heritage language education: A proposal for the next 50 years
Maria Carreira (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign) is Professor of Spanish, California State University, Long Beach and Co‐Director, National Heritage Language Resource Center, UCLA.Olga Kagan (PhD, Pushkin Institute, Moscow) is Professor of Russian and Director, National Heritage Language Resource Center, UCLA.
Abstract
This article discusses ideas that will likely figure prominently in the development of the field of heritage language (HL) studies over the next five decades. Drawing on the ideals that prompted the launch of the Heritage Language Initiative 20 years ago and building on the accomplishments of the field since then, we make several proposals for advancing research and instruction to better serve the needs of HL‐speaking youth and communities, as well as the nation at large. With this overarching goal, we focus in particular on the ways to institutionalize HL education in foreign language departments and mainstream it in the larger U.S. educational system
1 INTRODUCTION
Predictions, in general, are fraught with risk. This is particularly so when it comes to heritage language studies (HLS), a relatively new field that is connected to factors as wide‐ranging and variable as immigration, education, globalization, and politics. As such, our goal for this article is not to lay out a comprehensive and particularized road map for the future but rather to discuss some of the big ideas that are likely to figure prominently in the field over the next decades in light of current and projected needs. Some of these ideas involve building on current research and pedagogical advances, while others are of a more transformative nature. In the latter category, we discuss how to reconceptualize language teaching and learning to serve the needs of HL learners in contexts other than HL‐specific classes. We also argue for the need to institutionalize HL education in language departments and to mainstream it in the larger educational system.
We start by examining the main factors that launched the field of HLS and have guided its development in the last 20 years, with the purpose of considering critical questions that bear on the future of the field of HLS, in particular: (1) Are the social and demographic conditions that gave rise to the field likely to persist in the future? (2) Are the main tenets of the field, as it exists today, likely to remain relevant for decades to come? These questions are central to the long‐term sustainability and centrality of HLS within the field of language education. Following this discussion, we turn to areas of priority for the coming decades, with a particular emphasis on research, pedagogy, and institutional issues.
2 BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FIELD
The field of HLS has its roots in Spanish as heritage language (SHL), particularly in the work of Guadalupe Valdés starting in the 1970s (Carreira, 2012). However, the actual teaching of SHL speakers in separate and specialized classes stretches as far back as the 1930s, although the methods used in those early days deviated significantly from those of today (Valdés‐Fallis, 1978). Current methods and more generally the field of HLS as we know it today came into being around the turn of the new millennium when the National Foreign Language Center and the Center for Applied Linguistics launched the Heritage Language Initiative “with the goal of building an education system that is responsive to heritage communities and national language needs and capable of producing a broad cadre of citizens able to function professionally in both English and another language” (Brecht & Ingold, 2002), p. 5). Furthering these efforts, the Heritage Languages in America conference was held in Long Beach, California, in 1999, leading to the publication of a proceedings volume (Peyton, Ranard, & McGinnis, 2001). Notably, this conference marked the first time that teachers and researchers across languages came together to establish the tenets of the HLS field, take inventory of its needs, and map a course of action for its development. Other important landmarks from this period include the creation of the Heritage Language Journal in 2002 and the establishment of the National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC) at UCLA in 2006 through a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant, with the mission to develop “effective pedagogical approaches to teaching heritage language learners, both by creating a research base and by pursuing curriculum design, materials development, and teacher education” (NHLRC, n.d.).
Two societal developments played a decisive role in the development of the field of HLS: globalization and immigration. Regarding globalization, in what became a foundational essay of the field, Brecht and Ingold (1998) observed that the United States had at the time an unprecedented need for individuals with professional‐level language expertise to interact with other nations, and they argued that HL learners are particularly well poised to fill this need by virtue of their considerable linguistic and cultural skills. Nearly 20 years later, the continued relevance of this issue was made evident in a 2017 report by the Commission on Language Learning of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS; henceforth, America's Languages) with words that recalled those of Brecht and Ingold's 1998 essay: “[p]roficiency in English is not sufficient to meet the nation's needs in a shrinking world, nor the needs of individual citizens who interact with other peoples and cultures more than at any other time in human history” (AAAS, 2017, p. viii; see also Van Deusen‐Scholl, 2014).
America's Languages also underscored the continuing social imperative of expanding language capacity to address the needs of the nation's immigrant communities, including education, health care, and legal rights (AAAS, 2017). Indeed, the development of the field of HL education closely follows an unprecedented period of growth in the nation's immigrant population, which started in the 1990s and continues to the present day. Spanish speakers make up the lion's share of that growth, but other languages have also experienced significant growth including Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Arabic, and Russian (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). At 42.4 million, today's immigrant population is the highest ever in American history. Currently, one out of five U.S. residents speaks a language other than English at home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017; https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/POP815216#viewtop). This population includes 12 million school‐age children, accounting for 22% of this country's student population (Kids Count Data Center, n.d., n.p.).
This information underscores the close connection between demographic developments—particularly those resulting from immigration—and the field of HLS. Essentially, the fact that HL learners now constitute a major demographic learning group for a large number of language programs within the United States helps explain the growth and development of the field.
What then can we expect in terms of immigration to the United States in the coming years, and what kind of future does that portend for HLS? Projections are that the bulk of the U.S. population growth in the coming 50 years will come from immigration such that immigrants and their children will comprise about a third of the total U.S. population, which is a significantly larger presence than today's one fourth (Fry, Lopez, Cohn, Passell, & Brown, 2015). This suggests that HLS will continue to have a significant presence in American society. However, the relative representation of languages will likely change over time, with Asian immigrants likely to outnumber immigrants from the Spanish‐speaking world by 2065 (Fry et al., 2015, para. 14). The foreign‐born population (also called the first generation of an immigrant family) is projected to grow from 14 to 18% of the U.S. population, and the second generation (the children of the foreign born) is projected to reach 18% from today's 12% (Fry et al., 2015, para. 7). The third generation and beyond are expected to grow more slowly and decline in size over the next five decades. Generational status is significant because as sociolinguistic research shows, it is the immigrants themselves and their children who largely use the HL in the United States (Fishman, 2014; Rumbaut & Massey, 2013). Thus, tomorrow's learners may be similar to those of today in that they will likely be a second or 1.5 generation and will have some functional skills in their HL, although to varying degrees (Carreira & Kagan, 2011).
From the point of view of instruction, this means that today's pedagogical advances and the foundational research informing them may remain useful into the foreseeable future, even if the particular HLs spoken in the United States and taught in schools change over time. All in all, the likelihood that immigration and global competitiveness will remain high‐priority issues for years to come bodes well for the HLS field. Specifically, it suggests that HL learners will continue to be a major demographic learning group for language programs and that HL teaching and learning will remain highly relevant to national interests.
Implicit in the above discussion is the assumption that tomorrow's HL‐speaking children will continue to pursue the formal study of their HL. This is a reasonable expectation but by no means a guaranteed outcome. Indeed, declining enrollments at the postsecondary level (Goldberg, Looney, & Lusin, 2013) along with declining offerings of language instruction in K–12, with the exception of dual‐language programs (Fee, Rhodes, & Wiley, 2014), paint a worrying picture and underscore the importance of stepping up efforts in promoting HL language education (Kagan, Carreira, & Hitchins Chik, 2017). Also important is having instructional paradigms that serve the needs and reflect the realities of HL learners. As discussed in the next section, while much has been accomplished in this regard, substantial challenges remain that will likely occupy us for the coming decades.
3 RESEARCH AND PEDAGOGY: WHERE WE ARE AND WHERE WE NEED TO BE
That HL learners’ language pedagogical needs differ from those of second language (L2) learners has been the central tenet of the HLS field from its inception. However, the precise nature of these needs and what they mean for instruction have started to come into focus only recently. Research has made major inroads in identifying life experiences that shape overall proficiency in the HL, including immigration history, language socialization practices in the home and HL communities, the availability of schooling in the HL, and larger societal practices and attitudes (Zyzik, 2016). Factors that bear on the development of HL grammars include the setting and timing of HL acquisition and the amount, modality, and quality of exposure to the HL (Montrul, 2016). Given the variable nature of these factors, HL learners present a wide range of proficiency levels, giving rise to the challenge of student heterogeneity associated with HL teaching.
As a general rule, HL learners are particularly strong on the vocabulary and aspects of grammar that are learned by children early in life, such as pronunciation and canonical (regular) gender. Aspects of language learned later in life, particularly in the school setting, are more vulnerable to incomplete acquisition or attrition. These include, for example, case, some features of verbal morphology, and flexible word order (Benmamoun, Albirini, Montrul, & Saadah, 2014; Laleko, 2015; Montrul, Bhatt, & Girju, 2015; Polinsky, 2008a, 2008b).
In terms of functional skills, HL learners are best able to communicate in most informal settings that center on predictable, familiar topics related to daily activities and personal experience (Carreira & Kagan, 2011). Discussions that depart from these topics, particularly those that require taking an abstract perspective, pose a challenge. HL learners control language at the sentence level but struggle with producing paragraph‐length discourse that has appropriate connectors and is cohesive overall (Kagan & Kudyma, 2012; Swender, Martin, Rivera‐Martinez, & Kagan, 2014).
Beyond language, HL learners have aspirational and relational needs that stem from their bicultural and bilingual experiences and set them apart from L2 learners (Beaudrie, Ducar, & Potowski, 2014; Leeman, 2015). These needs are not fixed but evolve over time and through their ongoing interactions with others (He, 2006). For college‐age learners, some of the main reasons why they study their HL are to find identity, communicate with family and members of their HL community, and explore their cultural roots (Carreira & Kagan, 2011; He, 2010). Professional goals are also important, especially for Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese HL learners.
Informed by this and other research, the broad outlines of an HL pedagogy are emerging. To make learning accessible to students at different levels of proficiency, instruction is differentiated and learner centered (Carreira & Hitchins Chik, 2018) and builds on the skills that learners bring to the classroom. Developing students’ grammatical proficiency involves taking a selective approach to instruction that focuses on the vulnerable grammar topics identified by formal studies (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). Functional skills are developed through macro‐based (top‐down) teaching (Carreira, 2016). This approach uses authentic texts and engages learners in complex tasks at the onset of instruction rather than starting with grammar explanations and vocabulary lists, as is typically the case with L2 instruction. Akin to language arts instruction for native speakers, macro‐based teaching is oriented to teaching higher‐order skills, including discourse‐level language and multiliteracies (Carreira, 2016; Zapata & Lacorte, 2017). With a focus on real life, macro‐based teaching is also well suited for developing professional‐level skills as well as for addressing HL learners’ affective issues, including their aspirational and relational goals and their linguistic insecurities (Beaudrie et al., 2014).
All in all, the first 20 years of the field of HLS have been highly successful in terms of establishing its foundational ideas and practices. Moving forward, there is a need to address gaps in our understanding and to reconsider long‐standing assumptions about language teaching and learning that may undercut our ability to serve the needs of HL learners in mixed classes (i.e., classes with HLs and L2 learners). These priorities are discussed below.
3.1 Understanding language‐specific issues
While the general principles and best practices of HL instruction are widely understood to apply across the board, their implementation will necessarily vary by language, among other factors. For example, teaching literacy in Spanish, a language with a relatively transparent orthography and a Roman alphabet, is a much more straightforward task than it is for a language like Chinese. Likewise, contending with language variation in Russian and Spanish HL classes is a more manageable task than in Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic HL classes, where speakers of different regional languages and dialects are frequently present.
How these and other language‐specific factors should engage with the principles and best practices of HL teaching is not well understood. To a large extent, our current lack of understanding of this issue stems from the fact that linguistic and pedagogical research has been confined to a relatively small number of languages. For instance, the bulk of the work on literacy has been done in Spanish (Colombi & Harrington, 2012; Mikulski & Elola, 2011; Schwartz, 2003) and to a lesser extent Russian (Friedman & Kagan, 2008); research on HL and L2 learner interactions has focused on Spanish (Bowles, 2011; Bowles, Adams, & Toth, 2014; Henshaw, 2016); basic linguistic research has largely looked at Spanish, Russian, and Korean (Montrul, 2016); and research on HL learners’ functional skills has looked most extensively at Spanish and Russian (Kagan & Kudyma, 2012; Swender et al., 2014). This is not to suggest that these are the only languages contributing to the advancement of the field (see, for example, Lynch [2014] for a discussion of research on other languages; Benmamoun et al. [2014] for Arabic; and Kondo‐Brown and Brown [2017] for advances in teaching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as an HL). Rather, it is to say that there is a need to expand the range of languages under study. Asian languages—a category that encompasses vastly different languages—are particularly important in this regard, in light of projected U.S. demographics.
3.2 Building connections between the subdisciplines of HLS
Considerable advances in linguistic research in recent years have not been accompanied by a parallel understanding of what this means for teaching and learning, let alone HL maintenance and reversing language shift. In reference to the tenuous relationship between linguistic researchers and practitioners, Polinsky (2016) posited that “the two sides respect each other but continue on their respective paths, in part because there are only so many hours in the day, because the vocabularies of the two fields are different, and because of inertia” (p. 326).
A more fundamental reason may stem from the lack of direct correspondence between the findings of linguistic research and what is involved in teaching and learning. Notably, the detection of gaps in the grammar of HL learners—a common pursuit of basic linguistic research—does not in and of itself answer the essential pedagogical question of whether these gaps should be the focus of instruction. It is possible, for example, that some gaps can be filled through extensive exposure to authentic input without the need for explicit form‐focused instruction. Alternatively, some gaps may be of low instructional priority because they may have little bearing on larger goals such as increasing students’ functional skills and reversing language shift. What is more, for gaps that are deemed to be worthy of instruction, linguistic research has not shed light on the “how” of instruction—that is, the types of interventions that result in measurable gains in grammatical accuracy (see, for example, Torres and Serafini (2016) and Torres (2018) for how learning is impacted by task design), let alone other aspects of linguistic competency such as fluency.
The point is that basic linguistic research is one piece of the complicated puzzle of HL teaching and learning. Psycholinguistic, social, and cognitive processes that bear on HL teaching and learning are also part of the puzzle as well as more mundane considerations, such as how to prioritize competing objectives in a crowded curriculum. Another piece of the puzzle is to understand how the different components of HL learners’ linguistic repertoire interact with each other: for instance, how gains in functional oral proficiency impact different areas of grammatical competence and literacy, as well as how they impact usage of the HL. This relates to a point made by Ilieva and Clark‐Gareca (2016) in reference to assessment that applies more broadly to HL research and instruction: that there is a need to take into consideration the totality of HL learners’ abilities, including their ability to engage in performance‐based tasks. With that in mind, the current approach of studying the different components of HL knowledge in isolation should be complemented by research that leads to a more integrated understanding of the language of HL learners and contributes to the development of pedagogies that promote whole language development.
3.3 Pursuing more classroom‐based research
At the heart of HL education are the learners themselves: their needs, strengths, dispositions, etc., and what these mean for teaching and learning. So far, data on HL learners have been collected mostly through surveys similar to Carreira and Kagan's (2011) that rely on students’ self‐reporting; through assessment studies, such as Kagan and Kudyma (2012) and Swender et al., 2014, which use the ACTFL proficiency guidelines (Swender, Conrad, & Vickers, 2012) to measure functional skills; and through linguistic research in laboratory settings. Though extremely valuable, these approaches are limited in terms of providing a comprehensive account of HL teaching and learning because they all necessarily involve simplifying assumptions. These simplifications mean that important real‐world complexities are overlooked. To address those complexities, classroom‐based studies are needed.
Recent laboratory studies serve to illustrate this point. These studies have shown that HL and L2 learners have complementary skills that can be harnessed to create opportunities for reciprocal learning in mixed classes (Bowles, 2011; Bowles et al., 2014; Henshaw, 2016; Valentín‐Rivera, 2016). These findings are of enormous significance in that they move us from thinking about HLs and L2 learners as being in opposition to each other in the classroom context to thinking about them as having complementary and synergistic abilities. From the point of view of instruction, this approach opens the door to a pedagogy of mixed classes where all learners benefit from and contribute to instruction.
In the real world of the classroom, however, applying these ideas proves surprisingly elusive. One reason is that the cited studies made two simplifying assumptions that are hardly ever met in the real world to make an experimental approach tractable. One assumption is that mixed classes can be organized into HL–L2 learner pairs. In fact, many mixed classes are very unbalanced in terms of the numbers of HL and L2 learners (e.g., some have a small number of HL learners relative to L2 learners, or vice versa). Another assumption is that HL and L2 learners can be effectively matched for proficiency. This renders paired work, as conceived in the cited studies, impossible to replicate in many if not all mixed classes. Arguably, the most serious problem is that these studies assumed a binary student population of HL and L2 learners. In fact, in many languages mixed classes also include HL speakers of a language or dialect that is closely related to the language of instruction but is not the language of instruction (e.g., Gujarati or Marathi speakers in a Hindi class), HL speakers of a regional language that is not genetically related to the language of instruction (e.g., Tamil speakers in a Hindi class), and native speakers of the target language or of other related languages (Gambhir, 2008). How reciprocal learning—and more broadly, how curriculum design, instruction, and assessment—should proceed in these and other classes with diverse student populations will not be sorted out in a lab. Field research is needed, along with language‐specific research, along the lines discussed earlier.
The importance of this type of work cannot be overstated. Though it is widely accepted that HL learners are best taught in specialized HL classes, large numbers of HL learners study their home language in mixed classes (see Carreira, 2016). This is true across all languages, including Spanish (Beaudrie, 2011, 2012), and it is likely to remain this way into the foreseeable future, which makes it vitally important to devise a pedagogy for mixed classes that is responsive to the needs of HL learners along with those of L2 learners. Another reason to focus on mixed classes is because they are the main purveyors of instruction for HL learners with the lowest levels of proficiency. These individuals are arguably the most neglected category of HL learners and, paradoxically, also the most in need of instruction (Beaudrie, 2009; Beaudrie & Ducar, 2005).
The existing, very limited, classroom‐based research paints a worrying picture of the current state of mixed classes. In particular, it has suggested that in some cases the instructional topics, methods, materials, and approaches of mixed classes are indistinguishable from those of L2 classes, which means that they are not suitable for HL learners. Adding insult to injury, teachers in mixed classes may not see a need to attend to the needs of HL learners (Carreira, 2016; Schwartz, 2014). More classroom‐based research across different languages, instructional levels, and institutional contexts is needed to correct this situation. Beyond that, as discussed next, there is a need to reconsider long‐standing perspectives and practices in language teaching that may undercut teaching and learning in mixed classes.
3.4 Reconsidering assumptions about language teaching and learning
Studies of how languages are used and learned in multilingual and multidialectal environments prove useful when language educators are thinking about how to conceive of mixed classes. In such settings, (also called contact zones), successful interactions rely on a competence for practice, as opposed to the kind of competence for form associated with formal instruction. Accompanying this performative orientation to language is an openness to diversity and a cooperative disposition on the part of speakers in the contact zones that helps them negotiate meaning by coconstructing norms and pooling their linguistic repertoires (Canagarajah, 2014).
Some of these dispositions and practices are attested to in HL learners and HL classes. In particular, Torres (2013) showed that HL learners focus primarily on communication, rather than form, when engaged in task‐based instruction. This distinguishes them from L2 learners, who do focus on form. Similarly, in Helmer's (2014) study of a Spanish HL class in a Southwest charter high school, learners rejected activities that they perceived as serving no other purpose but to practice grammar. Appropriately titled “It's not real, it's just a story to learn Spanish,” this study underscored the importance of “meaningful activity and authentic materials that connect the curriculum to students’ linguistic strengths, target‐culture knowledge, and the communities from which they came” (p. 186). These lessons echo Canagarajah's (2014) observation that pedagogies for contact zones should “provide spaces for learners to appropriate dominant norms based on their own values and interests” (p. 86). Also aligning with the practices of contact zones, both studies (Helmer, 2014; Torres, 2013) supported prioritizing “procedural knowledge, not propositional knowledge” when teaching HL learners (Canagarajah, 2014, p. 84).
The practice of pooling linguistic repertoires observed in contact zones bears on the issue of how to conceive of reciprocal learning in diverse classes. Contact zones frequently exhibit what is known as “distributed competence,” where communication results from the collective capacities of groups. Under this view, “competence is spread out on several agents whose competences cannot be viewed in isolation because they are interdependent” (Stoof, Martens, Van Merrienboer, & Bastiaens, 2002, p. 354). This view contrasts with “individual competence,” where capacity is seen as residing primarily in the individual learner and knowledge is viewed as something that is transferred or traded between individuals during the learning process.
As will be recalled, the lessons from laboratory studies about reciprocal learning in mixed classes are difficult, if not impossible, to operationalize because they hinge on having balanced numbers of learners with complementary skills, a condition that is virtually never met in the real world. We can now see that this condition arises because reciprocal learning is being used to build individual competence. However, if reciprocal learning is reconceptualized as being about building distributed competence—i.e., increasing the competence of the class as a whole—then possibilities open up for instantiating the larger lessons of Bowles (2011), Bowles et al. (2014), and Henshaw (2015) in any number of diverse learning environments.
Reciprocal learning, of course, is just one piece of the larger puzzle of how to conceive of teaching and learning in multilingual and/or multidialectal classes. Developing a comprehensive pedagogy for such classes will require classroom‐based research as well as research on a wide gamut of learners that participate in these classes whose needs, capabilities, and dispositions are not well understood. More broadly, the development of a pedagogy for linguistically diverse classes based on the model of the contact zones will require an openness to language learning approaches that are significantly different from those of today.
4 THE STATE OF HL INSTRUCTION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENTS
Even after almost 20 years of research, HL instruction remains almost an afterthought in institutions of learning as a whole. Fee et al. (2014) compared demographics across the United States to language offerings in K–12 public schools. Two omissions became clear: There is no coordination between local communities and the HLs taught, and there is little variety of languages offered. Kagan (2017) came to similar conclusions after examining public high school language offerings in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Some languages of local communities are offered, while other languages that are actively used in large communities are not taught. For example, there are sizeable communities of Tagalog and Persian speakers but neither Tagalog nor Persian is taught in any public high school in the area. The reasons for such gaps are not clear, but there is an instructive tale about introducing Vietnamese in Orange County, which is home to the largest Vietnamese community in the United States. Attempts to introduce Vietnamese started in the early 1980s, and it took almost 20 years before community efforts paid off (Yi, 2002). Community activists were eventually helped by university faculty (Wiley, personal communication) to establish the first program. Vietnamese programs in Orange County are now thriving, but the amount of effort and time it took may serve as a deterrent for other language communities. These findings underscore both the importance of building public–private partnerships to supplement and support HL language instruction and the inherent difficulty of the work of these partnerships (AAAS, 2017; Kagan et al., 2017).
The postsecondary level offers a more encouraging but far from problem‐free picture of HL instruction. Carreira's (2017, p. 351) national survey of 294 programs spanning 27 languages found that the large majority of programs (73%) offered some form of specialized instruction for HL learners, either in the form of HL courses or other arrangements, such as independent studies, internships, tutoring, etc. However, for many programs, the availability of HL instruction was dependent on high levels of volunteerism and initiative by committed faculty rather than institutional support, which was weak in many cases. As a result, the availability of HL instruction fluctuated from one term to another. (For other research on HL programs, see also Beaudrie, 2011, 2012; Reynolds, Howard, & Deák, 2009.)
The status of HL instruction in language departments stands in sharp contrast with that of L2 instruction. Considered a core component of language curricula, L2 courses are a staple of language programs across educational levels. Crucially, there is no need to justify their existence and resources are routinely allocated for them. By contrast, the importance of HL instruction often has to be explained to the decision makers in language departments and HL courses have to be fought for on a term‐by‐term basis.
The pattern that emerges across educational levels is that HL instruction is not institutionalized. Ekholm and Trier (1987) defined institutionalization as “a process through which an organization assimilates an innovation into its structure” (p. 13). Key markers of institutionalization are listed below. Notably, HL instruction shows vulnerability on each:
- 1. Acceptance by relevant participants who see the innovation as valuable and as legitimately belonging;
- 2. Widespread use of the innovation throughout the institution, organization, district, etc.;
- 3. Firm expectation that use of the practice and/or product will continue;
- 4.
The innovation is stable and routinized in the sense that:
- a.
Continuation does not depend on the actions or motivations of specific individuals but on the culture or structure of the organization or on procedures that have been put in place to support the innovation; and
- b. Time, space, personnel, funding, and other resources are routinely allocated. (adapted from Ekholm & Trier, 1987, p. 17; Eiseman, Fleming, & Roody, 1990, pp. 12–13; Miles & Louis, 1987, p. 26)
- a.
Kagan et al. (2017) identified a number of issues that bear on the institutionalization of HL education in language departments. In the discussion that follows we focus on two that loom large for the future of HLS: low enrollments and teacher training.
4.1 Low enrollments
For many programs, particularly those in the less commonly taught languages, low enrollments present an insurmountable obstacle to having separate classes for HL learners (Carreira, 2016). A noted earlier, this makes it important to develop an effective pedagogy for mixed classes. Here, we examine two additional approaches for serving the needs of HL learners that do not involve offering HL‐specific classes: out‐of‐classroom learning experiences and collaborative distance learning.
Many college‐age HL learners study their HL in out‐of‐classroom learning experiences such as internships, service‐learning, and study abroad (2017). Many of these arrangements involve experiential learning, which makes them very valuable from the point of view of promoting the development of language skills for a real‐world context. In addition, out‐of‐classroom learning options build on HL learners’ home‐based bilingualism and respond to their desire to make professional use of their language and to connect with local HL‐speaking communities. Promising work along these lines has included Lowther Pereira (2016), Martínez (2010), Parra (2013), and a special issue of the Heritage Language Journal (Moreno & MacGregor‐Mendoza, 2016) on service‐learning. Notwithstanding the merits of out‐of‐classroom learning, it is not without limitations. In particular, it may not be suitable with young learners and it may not be workable in the absence of local communities of HL speakers.
Collaborative distance learning (also called course‐sharing) offers another option for meeting the needs of HL learners in departments with few HL learners. There are different models of collaborative distance learning, but they all essentially involve pooling students, teachers, and other resources from different institutions to foster sustainable communities of practice among learners and teachers (see, for example, Van Deusen‐Scholl & Charitos, 2016). Cross‐disciplinary course sharing shows particular promise in terms of expanding HL learners’ linguistic repertoires by virtue of the possibilities it presents for connecting language learning to other disciplines. As noted by the Commission on Language Learning of the AAAS, HL learners are well served by pedagogical approaches that give them the opportunity to “exercise their heritage language in non‐English language courses like social studies and science” (2017, p. 22). This approach is consonant with language for specific purposes, an instructional model that offers opportunities for language learning in the context of a specific field, such as business, health care, or journalism (Crouse, 2013).
At the secondary level, course sharing between schools or across school districts and higher education can help address two persistent problems: (1) the lack of variety of languages taught, particularly the lack of instruction in languages of local communities, and (2) for Spanish HL learners, the lack of courses beyond the typical four‐year sequence offered by high schools. Since many Spanish speakers start instruction at the Intermediate Mid level (Swender et al., 2014), they complete all the available courses long before graduation. Course sharing involving multiple high schools or a university and multiple high schools can help alleviate this problem, thereby making it possible for HL speakers to attain the advanced levels of proficiency that are required for work in specific professional fields.
In terms of future priorities, institutionalizing out‐of‐classroom learning and collaborative distance learning will take considerable time and effort. In the area of pedagogy, it will involve developing HL‐specific instructional approaches for these formats, training teachers on them, and developing pedagogical materials and curricula. There are also practical issues to contend with such as how to assign student credit and measure faculty workload. The biggest challenges are likely to involve necessary changes in perspectives and practices. In particular, institutionalizing out‐of‐classroom learning will involve embracing a paradigm of teaching and learning that prioritizes a competence for practice over the kind of competence of form associated with formal instruction. In the area of course sharing, substantive changes in perspective are also necessary, as explained by Charitos, Kaiser, and Van Deusen‐Scholl (2017):
We need to broaden our understanding of the meaning of collaboration so that it can be recognized not as primarily an answer to financial constraints, but rather as an opportunity to transcend institutional and academic boundaries in order to establish effective and constructive relationships so as to offer high quality, meaningful, and rewarding classes across partner institutions. (para. 11)
4.2 Teacher training
Both preservice and in‐service training in HL teaching remain underdeveloped, despite three recent important contributions to the curricularization of HL‐teacher training: Beaudrie et al. (2014), the first teacher training textbook for HL teachers; Fairclough and Beaudrie's (2016) edited volume on innovative HL teaching strategies; and the online HL teacher training certificate by the NHLRC (Carreira, Hitchins Chik, & Kagan, 2017). The competencies required for teaching HLs are many and arguably exceed those of L2 teaching. They include training on the principles and best practices of HL pedagogy (e.g., differentiation, macro‐based teaching, etc.), training on strategies for the different instructional formats discussed above (HL classes, mixed classes, out‐of‐classroom learning, and collaborative distance learning), and sociolinguistic training, in particular, on issues surrounding language variation (Beaudrie et al., 2014; Schwartz, 2014). In addition, Parra (2014) argued for engaging student teachers in community service‐learning to foster critical reflection on the linguistic and cultural issues that bear on HL teaching and learning.
As of now, few schools of education in the United States offer training of any kind for HL teachers, let alone the kind of comprehensive preparation described above. For working teachers, training opportunities typically involve workshops, presentations at professional conferences, summer programs such those offered by STARTALK for teachers of strategic languages, or online resources such as the NHLRC online course (Carreira et al., 2017).
More and better teacher‐training opportunities are needed across all languages. However, the need is particularly acute in the less commonly taught and critical languages, where according to McGinnis (2014), “[t]he question is not whether there are current or potential HL students, (but) the more critical, crosscutting need is for teachers—certified or not, by alternative or traditional means—who are sufficiently qualified and committed to the teaching and learning of their language and cultural heritage” (p. 147).
Qualified teachers are also needed to fill the urgent need for HL textbooks and other pedagogical materials. Textbook publishing companies are not likely to address this necessity. A more promising solution is for teachers to collaborate on creating and disseminating HL‐appropriate pedagogical materials that are responsive to their particular language, level, institutional context, etc. The Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning, a National Foreign Language Resource Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is dedicated to fostering these collaborations and facilitating the dissemination of the materials produced. The success of these efforts, however, depends on having well‐trained teachers who can both create such materials and use them effectively in their teaching.
Ultimately, the long‐term vitality of HL education hinges on the institutionalization of HL teacher training, leading to all student teachers and teaching associates in university departments having a foundation in the principles and best practices of HL teaching. As Carreira (2017) noted, “[i]f today's graduate students are not instructed on the principles of HL teaching and learning, they will not have the knowledge or see the need to push forward an HL agenda when they enter the profession as faculty members, administrators, textbook editors, etc.” (p. 359). Currently, few institutions have the personnel to offer meaningful training to their graduate students or preservice K–12 teachers. Until that changes, collaborative distance learning and online courses such as the HL teacher training certificate by the NHLRC can address the need for teacher preparation.
5 MAINSTREAMING HL EDUCATION IN THE AMERICAN EDUCATION SYSTEM
America's Languages (AAAS, 2017) argued that addressing the nation's language deficit requires making language instruction part of the core curricula of American schools, on par with math and English. A related but arguably more ambitious approach involves mainstreaming HL teaching and learning. This concept is premised on the idea that school‐wide practices and curricula should support the development of home languages and, conversely, that home languages should support the academic development of immigrant children (Cummins, 2014). Mainstreaming HL education serves important goals beyond that of addressing the nation's language deficit. As noted earlier, 22% of students in American schools speak a language other than English at home. Though not all such students are limited English proficiency (LEP) students, many are. As a group, LEPs have higher dropout rates and are more likely to lag behind their nonimmigrant peers in school (Carreira & Beeman, 2014). Addressing this situation is not just about ensuring the academic and social success of these children—a valuable goal in itself—but given the sheer size of the immigrant student population, it is also a societal imperative in terms of preparing an educated workforce for the future. With a focus on developing literacy, engaging students in culturally meaningful ways, and building on students’ home‐based bilingualism and biculturalism, HL education is uniquely positioned to improve educational outcomes for immigrant children.
Dual‐language programs provide a particularly rich model for how to mainstream HL instruction in schools. The term dual language is often used as an umbrella term for a variety of programs where students develop academic content knowledge and literacy in English and another language with the goal of developing “full bilingualism” in both languages (Center for Applied Linguistics, n.d.). The academic benefits of dual‐language programs are well documented and include higher scores on standardized tests in English and math, improved memory and problem‐solving skills, and a greater appreciation for other cultures (AAAS, 2017; Beaudrie et al., 2014).
There are also models outside of dual‐language programs. Cummins (2014) described a number of projects in Canadian schools where students are encouraged to use their home languages “as cognitive and academic resources within the classroom” (p. 11). In one of these, middle school students write stories in both English and their home language as part of a multiliteracy project. Another project involves preschool children providing translations for words and phrases from their home language during story time. In the same vein, Carreira (2007) described a high school in Calexico, California, that allows students who are not fully proficient in English to present their senior project in Spanish or in a combination of English and Spanish. To help students with this and other assignments, the program has an extensive library of books and other Spanish‐language resources. Another school in Long Island City, New York, has organized the curriculum along thematic units, with Spanish HL instruction contributing to these units (see also Papa & Berka, 2016).
A common thread of these and other initiatives is that they view HL education as part of a larger effort to improve educational outcomes for immigrant children and promote societal multilingualism. In keeping with this idea, to mainstream HL education it is important to remove the disciplinary boundaries that keep the principles and practices of the field confined to language departments and extend their use to the wider school context. In the same vein, HL curricula in language programs should connect to other areas of the curriculum (e.g., social studies, science, and math), reinforcing and expanding upon the work in those disciplines. Finally, also central to the goal of mainstreaming HL education is building wide networks of support among key stakeholders, including parents, local HL communities, teachers from all disciplines, and school administrators.
6 CLOSING THOUGHTS
The foundational years of the field of HLS have been highly productive, in both basic research and pedagogy. Building on these advances, the field is poised to tackle two big‐picture items: (1) developing a comprehensive HL pedagogy for different languages and instructional contexts by addressing knowledge gaps and reconsidering long‐standing assumptions about language teaching and learning, and (2) at the institutional level, solidifying the place for HL education in foreign language departments on par with L2 education and mainstreaming HL teaching and learning in the larger school context.
This is an ambitious agenda, even for a period of time as long as 50 years. Judging by the accomplishments of the last 20 years, the expectations for the future of the field should be high.
Number of times cited: 2
- Christelle Palpacuer Lee, Jessie H. Curtis and Mary E. Curran, Shaping the vision for service‐learning in language education, Foreign Language Annals, 51, 1, (169-184), (2018).
- Diego Pascual y Cabo and Josh Prada, Redefining Spanish teaching and learning in the United States, Foreign Language Annals, 51, 3, (533-547), (2018).
