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10. Research on University-Based Spanish Heritage Language Programs in the United States: The Current State of Affairs
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C H A P T E R 10 Research on UniversityBased Spanish Heritage Language Programs in the United States THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS Sara M. Beaudrie, University of Arizona H ERITAGE LANGUAGE EDUCATION in the United States currently enjoys the attention of a wide group of researchers, policymakers, administrators, and practitioners. There are the National Heritage Language Resource Center (at the University of California, Los Angeles), which is devoted to heritage language education and research; the Heritage Language Journal; the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages at the Center for Applied Linguistics; conferences and workshops devoted to heritage language issues; and many journal articles, books, and dissertations. This is a significant change from the 1970s, when Spanish heritage language (SHL) education began as a grassroots effort of concerned educators in public institutions who realized that traditional foreign language courses did not meet the needs of heritage language learners (Valdés, Lozano, and Garcia-Moya 1981).1 Unlike in countries such as Canada (Duff 2008) and Australia (Elder 2005, 2009), where heritage language instruction garnered early government support, the US government did not fund large-scale programs or provide other support to spearhead the teaching of heritage languages (Valdés, Lozano, and Garcia-Moya 1981), nor did many communities create Spanish language schools to maintain their language. In fact, some Latinos have objected to their children receiving bilingual education (Barnwell 2008). 203 204 SARA M. BEAUDRIE Yet despite this lack of support, many pioneering professors in higher education institutions began creating special courses to better serve the specific languagelearning needs of Spanish speakers. The huge expansion of the US Latino population in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in institutions of higher education (see the introduction to this volume, by Beaudrie and Fairclough), greatly increased the need to respond to this new student population in the language classroom. The beginning of Spanish instruction for heritage language learners was not without challenges. There were no instructional objectives, no instructors trained in how to teach Spanish to Spanish-speaking individuals, no curriculum guidelines , and no appropriate textbooks for such courses (Valdés 1997; Valdés et al. 1981). The main focus of early SHL courses was remedial, and thus they were aimed at teaching learners standard Spanish to ‘‘repair the damage done at home’’ (Valdés-Fallis 1977, 90). According to Valdés, very few programs focused on developing proficiency in reading and writing Spanish, the skills with which SHL learners typically need the most help. As SHL researchers continued to debate the appropriate content of SHL courses, they sought answers to basic and fundamental questions, such as Who are SHL learners? What should the objectives of SHL instruction be? What materials should we use to teach these learners? By the turn of the twenty-first century, the field of SHL education had moved forward by incorporating innovative pedagogical approaches geared for heritage language instruction (Anderson 2008; Carreira 2007; Kondo-Brown 2010; Potowski 2005; Roca and Colombi 2003; Trujillo 2009; Webb and Miller 2000). These various innovations highlighted the diversity of the SHL population and helped instructors to recognize that drafting a single set of learning objectives and curricular specifications for them is neither possible nor desirable. Whereas some learners need instruction that approximates the content of a foreign language course in certain respects (Beaudrie 2009a; Beaudrie and Ducar 2005; Carreira 2004), others need content similar to that in a language arts class (Potowski and Carreira 2004). Indeed, a one-size-fits-all pedagogical paradigm is not likely to succeed in educating such a diverse population (see chapter 11 in this volume, by Carreira). Some principles, however, do hold true for SHL education in a variety of contexts: (1) Mixed classes of heritage and foreign language learners are not an ideal learning environment for either group (see Potowski 2002, 2005); (2) the individual student’s specific needs must be the point of departure for curricular decisions (Beaudrie and Ducar 2005; Beaudrie, Ducar, and RelañoPastor 2009; Romero 2000); (3) it is important to help learners maintain or develop both standard, formal Spanish and nonstandard, informal registers that are of relevance to them (Bernal-Enrı́quez and Hernández-Chávez 2003; Ducar 2008; Hernández-Chávez 1993; Martı́nez 2003; Villa 1996); and (4) the main objectives for SHL instruction are language maintenance and development and literacy development (see Valdés 2005). These tenets of SHL instruction are vital [34.204.181.19] Project MUSE (2024...