RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT HERITAGE LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN THE L2 SPANISH CLASSROOM: TEACHER BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES

Abstract

With the growing number of English language learners throughout the United States enrolled in the foreign language class representing their heritage language, it is increasingly important for foreign language methodology courses to address how to plan for, instruct, and assess the diverse needs of these students in the K-12 foreign language classroom. Their needs as heritage language learners are different than those of second language learners. Therefore, in order to teach these language learners, teachers should possess specific competencies, not typically evident in foreign language teaching methodology courses. The present study is a preliminary effort to integrate a module on teaching heritage language learners into a foreign language teaching methodology course and to evaluate the development of teacher candidates’ declarative knowledge, beliefs, and conceptualizations about heritage language learners and heritage language instruction. Participants (N=30) are pre-service 9-12 Spanish teachers at two postsecondary institutions in the Eastern United States. The results demonstrate that teacher candidates move beyond conceiving heritage language learners as similar to second language learners and proceed toward perceiving them as culturally and linguistically diverse learners of Spanish, as evidenced through surveys and lesson plans.