This edited book offers a new look at community and heritage languages schools around the world, providing a comprehensive and nuanced portrait of language education and cultural understanding in and beyond school contexts. Covering research and practice, the contributors survey the global landscape of community and heritage language schools and explore new developments in the field to understand the challenges the schools face and discuss the impact they have on their students and surrounding communities. Chapters address key topics including language development, academic achievement, professional development, learner identity and agency, online learning and teaching disruptions. Contributors highlight learners’ voices throughout, with special attention to overlooked minority language communities and Indigenous voices. Through this wealth of thorough and insightful analysis, the contributors of this book position students of community/heritage languages schools as citizens of a plurilingual world who are central to global change. Abounding with original research, innovative ideas and cutting-edge teaching practices, this book is ideal for courses on multilingualism and language and culture.

A collaborative series with the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education highlighting leading-edge research across Teacher Education, International Education Reform and Language Education. Rethinking Heritage Language Education is an edited collection that brings together emerging and established researchers interested in the education field of Heritage Language Education to negotiate its concepts and practices, and investigate the correlation between culture and language from a pedagogic and cosmopolitical point of view. The scholars, who have contributed to the growth of Heritage Language Education as a discipline, reconsider and enrich their findings by drawing new lines across the boundaries of research and practice. It complements the previous work of these theorists, filling a void in the current literature around the question of Heritage Language Education.

This volume presents a multidisciplinary perspective on teaching heritage language learners. Contributors from theoretical and applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, educational policy, and pedagogy specialists explore policy and societal issues, present linguistic case studies, and discuss curricular issues, offering both research and hands-on innovation.

This edited book expands the current scholarship on teaching world languages for social justice and equity in K-12 and postsecondary contexts in the US. Over the past decade, demand has been growing for a more critical approach to teaching languages and cultures: in response, this volume brings together a group of scholars whose work bridges the fields of world language education and critical approaches to education. Within the current US context, the chapters address the following key questions: (1) How are pre-service or in-service world language teachers/professors embedding issues, understandings, or content related to social justice, human rights, access, critical pedagogy and equity into their teaching and curriculum? (2) How are teacher educators preparing language teachers to teach for social justice, human rights, access and equity?

As a result of both immigration and birth patterns, the number of individuals in the United States who speak a language other than English is increasing dramatically. At the same time, there are tremendous needs in all areas of the workforce for individuals with proficiency in languages other than English.

The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education provides the rapidly growing and globalizing field of heritage language (HL) education with a cohesive overview of HL programs and practices relating to language maintenance and development, setting the stage for future work in the field. Driving this effort is the belief that if research and pedagogical advances in the HL field are to have the greatest impact, HL programs need to become firmly rooted in educational systems. Against a background of cultural and linguistic diversity that characterizes the twenty-first century, the volume outlines key issues in the design and implementation of HL programs across a range of educational sectors, institutional settings, sociolinguistic conditions, and geographical locations, specifically: North and Latin America, Europe, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Cambodia. All levels of schooling are included as the teaching of the following languages are discussed: Albanian, Arabic, Armenian (Eastern and Western), Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, French, Hindi-Urdu, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Pasifika languages, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Yiddish. These discussions contribute to the development and establishment of HL instructional paradigms through the experiences of “actors on the ground” as they respond to local conditions, instantiate current research and pedagogical findings, and seek solutions that are workable from an organizational standpoint. The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education is an ideal resource for researchers and graduate students interested in heritage language education at home or abroad.

The emergence of newer international standards and the focus on STEM education are transforming entire educational sectors. Yet, as schools focus more attention to developing global competencies and 21st century skills in their pedagogy, it has become critical to re-engage educators and school communities with the goals of language education, multilingualism, and multiliteracy while promoting interconnectedness, empathy, and mutual comprehension among our youth. With this in mind, it is important to understand the potential of multilingual education as it can serve our societies’ new expectations, and provide the right tools for success to our younger generations. The Gift of Languages: Paradigm Shift In U.S. Foreign Language Education explores the many advantages of multilingual education and sets the stage for a new paradigm in our approach to teaching and learning languages. The book touches on the issue of foreign language deficit in the United States and the changes that need to occur in our schools to better serve our children and our linguistic communities. The book also explores the growth of dual-language education in recent years and explores the connection between both multilingual programming and solving the United States’ foreign language problem. The discussion on language education in the United States has never been neutral; moreover, it has traditionally provided substantive direction and exerted significant authority over educational policy. Yet, this debate needs to move towards viewing multilingual education as an essential approach for our society, and as something that should be prevalent among educational policymakers. The audience for this book includes educators, language teachers, school leaders, school boards, program directors, scholars, and policy makers particularly if they want to join forces in building the future of education and investing in the multilingual capital of our nation. This book is part of The Bilingual Revolution Series. Praises We are at a critical point in our nation in which we can continue to hold on to our monolingual past, or embrace a multilingual and more inclusive future. The Gift of Languages helps us prepare and understand the necessary paradigm shift to adopt and implement a multilingual curriculum and mindset in our schools and communities. Co-authored by two pioneers and experienced experts in the bi- and multilingual education space, the book is a must read for educators, policy makers, community leaders, students, and interested parents who want to make meaningful changes now. – Andrew H. Clark, Ph.D. Chair, Dept. of Modern Languages & Literatures, Fordham University The Gift of Languages should awaken all Americans, especially the policy makers, for the need to raise future generations of multilingual citizens to compete and thrive in our global community. One of our founding fathers and presidents, Thomas Jefferson, spoke to and acted upon the need for teaching languages when he founded the University of Virginia; as a nation, we have not lived up to his words and actions. Let us remind ourselves that we started out a linguistically and culturally diverse group of peoples that came together to build a strong nation over the years. Linguistic diversity is the gift that our nation needs to give itself! – Francesco L. Fratto President, The Foreign Language Association of Chairpersons and Supervisors “Mastering languages is essential for communicating with and understanding others, respecting each other, and appreciating our heritages and our roots. The Gift of Languages offers an invaluable toolbox for policy makers, educators, families and students who are already working in the field of language and those who hope to create the kind of paradigm shift that the authors advocate. The book provides cogent arguments in favor of expanded language learning at all levels, and especially argues in favor of expanding the breadth and variety of multilingual educational opportunities already spreading in public school systems from Utah to Louisiana to New York and beyond. The authors cite examples of the “Bilingual Revolution” already underway and provide the kinds of arguments and examples that resonate for educators and drive policy towards furthering the way we value language education in the United States. The book is indispensable for anyone interested in the future of foreign language education.” – Jane F. Ross, Ph.D. President and Founder, French Heritage Language Program Over 60% of people on the planet are bilingual or multilingual — which suggests that this is the norm for human beings — and multiple studies demonstrate the cognitive, social, political, and financial benefits of bilingualism. Yet in the United States, we regularly hear news stories about people being shamed, bullied, and sometimes violently harmed for speaking other languages, even when they also speak English. Accessibly written, this book offers detailed arguments for both why and how the nation should embrace and promote linguistic diversity. Options for adults are expertly addressed, yet the authors invest even greater passion and detail in promoting early educational programs in which no child is left monolingual. I can think of no better way to shift our nation’s view of itself from “English Only” to “English Plus” and create a more inclusive society. We need a roadmap, and this book clearly lays out the territory and possible trajectories as it motivates us to make the journey. – Kimberly J. Potowski, Ph.D. Professor in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago About the Authors Fabrice Jaumont is the author of The Bilingual Revolution: The Future of Education is in Two Languages (TBR Books, 2017), which provides inspirational vignettes and practical advice for parents and educators who want to create a dual-language program in their own school. He has also published several books and articles on philanthropy, higher education, heritage languages, cinema, and the arts. Fabrice Jaumont is Education Attaché for the Embassy of France to the United States, a Program Director for FACE Foundation in New York, and the founder of New York in French. He is also a Senior Fellow at Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. Fabrice Jaumont holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and International Education from New York University. For more information, visit the author’s blog: fabricejaumont.net Kathleen Stein-Smith is the author of The U.S. Foreign Language Deficit: Strategies for Maintaining a Competitive Edge in a Globalized World (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2016), The U.S. Foreign Language Deficit and How It Can Be Effectively Addressed in the Globalized World: A Bibliographic Essay (Edwin Mellen Press, 2013), and The U.S. Foreign Language Deficit and Our Economic and National Security: A Bibliographic Essay on the U.S. Language Paradox. (Edwin Mellen Press, 2013). Kathleen Stein-Smith is Associate University Librarian at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Chair of the American Association of Teachers of French Commission on Advocacy, and member of the American Translators Association Education & Pedagogy Committee. She has taught foreign languages at high school and college level, taught adult learners, delivered TEDx talk on the U.S. foreign language deficit. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Union Institute & University. For more information, visit the author’s blog: kathleensteinsmith.wordpress.com