Heritage language education is a relatively new field developed as "heritage" has become an important trope of belonging, legitimacy and commodification. Many recent studies treat the "heritage language learner" as an objective category. However, it is a social construct, whose meaning is contested by researchers, school administrators and the students themselves. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2007-2011 at a weekend Japanese language school in the United States, this monograph investigates the construction of the heritage language learner at the intersections of the knowledge-power complex, ideologies of language and national belonging, and politics of schooling. It examines the ways individuals become, resist and negotiate their new subjectivity as heritage language learners through becoming objects of study, being caught in nationalist aspirations and school politics regarding what to teach to whom, and negotiating with peers with various linguistic proficiency and family backgrounds. The volume proposes a new approach to view the notion of heritage language learner as a site of negotiation regarding the legitimate knowledge of language and ways of belonging, while offering practical suggestions for schools.

"... focuses on issues at the forefront of heritage language teaching and research. Its state-of-the-art presentation will make this volume a standard reference book for investigators, teachers, and students. It will also generate further research and discussion, thereby advancing the field." María Carreira, California State University – Long Beach, United States "In our multilingual and multicultural society there is an undeniable need to address issues of bilingualism, language maintenance, literacy development, and language policy. The subject of this book is timely.... It has potential to make a truly significant contribution to the field." María Cecilia Colombi, University of California – Davis, United States 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. - The term "heritage language speaker" refers to an individual exposed to a language spoken at home but who is educated primarily in English. Research and curriculum design in heritage language education is just beginning. Heritage language pedagogy, including research associated with the attrition, maintenance, and growth of heritage language proficiency, is rapidly becoming a field in its own right within foreign language education. This book fills a current gap in both theory and pedagogy in this emerging field. It is a significant contribution to the goals of formulating theory, developing informed classroom practices, and creating enlightened programs for students who bring home-language knowledge into the classroom. Heritage Language Education: A New Field Emerging is dedicated to Professor Russell Campbell (1927-2003), who was instrumental in advocating for the creation of the field of heritage language education.

This book proposes community service-learning as a critical pedagogy that connects learners and communities to address key challenges in heritage language education. The book’s purpose is two-fold: to fill a crucial gap in empirical research on community service-learning in the heritage language context, as well as to provide language educators and practitioners essential guidelines for designing community service-learning courses, with particular attention paid to the characteristics and needs of Spanish heritage language learners. This book presents compelling evidence demonstrating the central role community service-learning plays in developing heritage language learners’ identities, connections to the heritage language community, language attitudes, and social, cultural, and sociolinguistic awareness. Importantly, this book also addresses the often-overlooked perspectives of community partners and liaisons. As the first original research monograph on community service-learning for Spanish heritage language learners, this pioneering book will undoubtedly aid students, instructors and administrators across all levels of language education.

This innovative, timely text introduces the theory, research, and classroom application of critical approaches to the teaching of minoritized heritage learners, foregrounding sociopolitical concerns in language education. Beaudrie and Loza open with a global analysis, and expert contributors connect a focus on speakers of Spanish as a heritage language in the United States to broad issues in heritage language education in other contexts – offering an overview of key concepts and theoretical issues, practical pedagogical guidance, and field-advancing suggestions for research projects. This is an invaluable resource for advanced students and scholars of applied linguistics and education, as well as language program administrators.

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.

This book explores heritage language learning, in particular Chinese Australians' learning of Chinese. The book is based on a mixed methods study which uses Bourdieu's sociological theory, and offers implications for sociologists of language and education, Chinese heritage language learners and teachers, and language an

Identity of Chinese Heritage Language Learners in a Global Era enriches the current research on heritage language (HL) learner identity by examining how identity is constructed, negotiated, and performed in the narratives of university Chinese HL (CHL) learners in Hong Kong. This monograph has identified three sub-categories of CHL learners: domestic-born Chinese, ‘third culture’ Chinese, and overseas Chinese sojourners. Through systematically examining these CHL learners’ life-history narratives about language learning, language use, and social experiences from early childhood to university time, this monograph shows how CHL learner identity is dynamically constructed and changed through self and social positioning across a wide range of spatio-temporal contexts. It also adopts investment, agency, and imagined communities to examine the shared discourses which reflect the relationship between identity and the larger social processes that involve transnational or postcolonial encounters. This monograph contributes to reflections on the emerging discourses of HL learner identity in the context of multilingualism and transnational migration. It challenges the stigmatised image of CHL learners as ‘diasporic subjects’ or ‘language minority students’ in the literature and conceptualises CHL learners as transformative linguistic and social actors in processes of transnational migration and institutional change. This monograph is targeted toward educators, researchers, and professionals working in the fields of heritage language, overseas Chinese studies, migrant studies, and intercultural studies.