The Implementation of Critical Pedagogies in the Spanish Heritage Language Classroom Challenges and Lessons Learned
Main Article Content
Abstract
In an attempt to battle systemic oppression towards Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) speakers in the United States, theoretical advances in the field of SHL education have pointed to a critical turn (Leeman & Serafini, 2016;
Martínez, 2003; among others). At the core of critical pedagogies is the goal of legitimizing and empowering SHL speakers. Developing students’ critical consciousness about how languages/dialects are valued differently based on
power dynamics enables them to question taken-for-granted and essentialist language assumptions and, consequently, better engage in the quest for social change. Nevertheless, there is still a gap between theory and practice due to the lack of critical pedagogical materials. This paper shares and reflects on SHL students’ feedback on the implementation of such materials in the classroom. It discusses the challenges and lessons learned in attempting to bridge theory and practice. The ultimate goal of this study is to inform and encourage other educators to collaborate in a transformative agenda aimed at the integration of critical pedagogies into the field of SHL education.
Article Details
References
Ahearn, L. M. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology 30, 109–37.
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands = la frontera: the new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt
Lute.
Aparicio, F. (1997). La enseñanza del español para hispanohablantes y la pedagogía
multicultural: praxis y teoría. In La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes: praxis y
teoría (pp. 222–232). Houghton Mifflin.
Beaudrie, S. M., Amezcua, A. & Loza, S. (2019). Critical language awareness for the heritage
context: Development and validation of a measurement questionnaire. Language Testing,
(3), 1–30.
Beaudrie, S., Ducar, C., & Potowski, K. (2014). Heritage language teaching: Research and
practice. McGraw Hill.
Beaudrie, S., & Fairclough, M. (2012). Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The
state of the field. Georgetown University Press.
Beaudrie, S. M. & Loza, S. (2022). The Central Role of Critical Language Awareness in
Spanish Heritage Language Education in the United States: An Introduction. In S. Loza &
S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.) Heritage Language Teaching: Critical Language Awareness Perspectives
for Research and Pedagogy (pp. 1–19). New Work: Routledge.
Beaudrie, S. M. & Wilson, D. V. (2022) Reimagining the goals of HL pedagogy through critical
language awareness. In S. Loza & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.) Heritage Language Teaching: Critical
Language Awareness Perspectives for Research and Pedagogy (pp. 63–79). New York: Routledge.
Duff, P., & Doherty, L. (2015). Examining agency in (second) language socialization research.
In P. Deters, G. Xuesong, E. Miller, & V. Gergana (Eds.), Theorizing and analyzing agency in
second language teaching (pp. 54–73). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters
Flores, N. & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language
diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review 85, 149–171.
Freire, P. (1970). The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
Fuad Selvi, A. (2020). Qualitative content analysis. In J. McKinley & H. Rose (Eds.) The
Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Applied Linguistics (pp. 440–452). New York:
Routledge.
Heller, M. (1999). Linguistic Minorities and Modernity. A sociolinguistic ethnography. London
and New York: Longman.
Herrera-Dulcet, A. (2019). Spanish with an attitude: Critical Translingual Competence for
Spanish Heritage Language Learners (doctoral dissertation). University of Arizona,
Tucson.
Holguín Mendoza, C. (2018). Critical Language Awareness (CLA) for Spanish Heritage
Language Programs: Implementing a Complete Curriculum. International Journal of
Multilingualism. 12(2), 65–79.
Holguín Mendoza, C. (2022). Sociolinguistic Justice and Student Agency in Language
Education: Towards a Model for Critical Sociocultural Linguistics Literacy. In S. Loza &
S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.) Heritage Language Teaching: Critical Language Awareness Perspectives
for Research and Pedagogy (pp. 138–156). New York: Routledge.
Knisely, K. A. (2022) Gender-just language teaching and linguistic competence development.
Foreign Language Annals, 55(3), 644–667.
Knisely, K. A. & Paiz, J. M. (2021) Bringing Trans, Non-binary, and Queer Understandings to
Bear in Language Education. Critical Multilingualism Studies, 9(1), 23–45.
Leeman, J. (2018). Critical language awareness in SHL: Challenging the linguistic subordination
of US Latinxs. In K. Potowski (Ed.) Handbook of Spanish as a Minority/Heritage Language,
(pp. 345–358). New York: Routledge.
Leeman, J. & Serafini, E. (2016). Sociolinguistics and heritage language education: A model for
promoting critical translingual competence. In M. Fairclough & S. Beaudrie (Eds.),
Innovative Strategies for Heritage Language Teaching (pp. 56–79). Washington DC:
Georgetown University Press.
MacGregor-Mendoza, P. (2000). Aquí No Se Habla Español: Stories of Linguistic Repression in
Southwest Schools. Bilingual Research Journal, 24, 355–367.
Martínez, G. (2003). Classroom Based Dialect Awareness in Heritage Language Instruction:
A Critical Applied Linguistic Approach. Heritage Language Journal, 1(1), 44–57.
Miller, E. R. (2014). The Language of Adult Immigrants: Agency in the Making. Tonawanda, New
York: Multilingual Matters.
Parra, M. L. & Serafini, E. J. (2022). “Bienvenidxs todes”: el lenguaje inclusivo desde una
perspectiva crítica para las clases de español. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching,
Potowski, K. (2018). Spanish as a heritage/minority language: A multifaceted look at ten
nations. In K. Potowski (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Spanish as a Heritage Language
(pp. 1–14). New York: Routledge.
Staples, S., Novikov, A., Picoral, A., Sommer-Farias, B. (2019–). Multilingual Academic Corpus
of Assignments–Writing and Speech.
United States Census Bureau. (2019). Language Use in the United States: 2019. Retrieved from:
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/acs/acs-50.html.
Valdés, G. (1976). Pedagogical Implications of Teaching Spanish to the Spanish-Speaking in the
United States. In G. Valdés & R. García-Moya (Eds.), Teaching Spanish to the Spanish
Speaking: Theory and Practice (pp. 5–27). San Antonio, Texas: Trinity University.
Valdés, G. (1995). The teaching of minority languages as “foreign” languages: Pedagogical and
theoretical challenges. Modern Language Journal, 79(3), 299–328.
Zentella, A. (2002). Latin@ languages and identities. In M. M. Suárez-Orozco & 1246954357
M. Paez (Authors), Latinos: Remaking America (pp. 321–338). Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Zentella, A. C. (2007). Dime con quién hablas, y te diré quién eres”: Linguistic (In)security and
Latina /o Unity. In J. Flores & Rosaldo (Eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Latino Studies
(pp. 25–39). Malden, MA: Blackwell.