David Cassels Johnson, professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and researcher affiliate in the Center for Social Science Innovation (CSSI), published a study examining how Iowa high school Spanish teachers accommodate and uplift heritage Spanish-speaking students.
Due to recent increases in immigration from Latin America to Iowa, heritage Spanish-speaking students are becoming more common in high school classrooms. These students are called “heritage” speakers due to familial exposure to Spanish, which can leave them with varying degrees of proficiency in the language.
Given that traditional high school Spanish classrooms are geared towards students learning Spanish as a second language, the needs of heritage speakers are often unmet.
To better understand the educational experiences of heritage speakers, Johnson surveyed Spanish teachers.
“Our motivation was to understand how Iowa language policies and programs impact these educational experiences,” Johnson said. “In particular, we sought to understand how the beliefs and practices of high school Spanish teachers influenced the classroom polices and pedagogy for heritage language speakers.”
A survey reaching all corners of Iowa
Johnson surveyed 28 educators in 12 Iowa school districts. All districts had large Spanish heritage student populations and three had specific courses for these students.
The CSSI research services team, led by Cassidy Branch, helped Johnson refine the survey.
“Branch was instrumental in creating an effective survey to gather interesting and informative data,” Johnson says.
The survey asked teachers about their perceptions of Spanish heritage learners, administrative and academic support for heritage learning programs, and their current language program’s goals and support.
How teacher insights can foster change
From the teachers’ written responses, Johnson identified several themes.
One theme was that teachers felt a lack of administrative and school support for policies and programs that accommodated heritage learners. Teachers remarked that their heritage learners felt bored and unengaged since the curriculum did not target them.
Another theme revealed that teachers, especially those from non-Latinx/o/a backgrounds, felt unprepared to teach heritage language learners because they had received no formalized training. Heritage language learners also felt insecure in their own Spanish abilities, as teachers reported instances of students minimizing their skills.
Finally, Johnson discovered that teachers rejected the idea of a “standard” Spanish. While grammar was an important goal in teachers’ classrooms, they more heavily emphasized the ability of students to develop their identities as Latinx/o/a and to understand the cultural and social positioning of the community within the United States.
Drawing from his findings, Johnson believes heritage speakers need to be better supported in Spanish classrooms.
“We need policies and programs that support Spanish heritage language students’ education,” he says. “The themes that emerged from this research reflect a lack of equal education opportunity in Spanish classes for these students.”
A closer look at the study and CSSI’s role
The study titled “Challenging deficit ideologies in Spanish heritage language policies and programs” was co-authored by Melanie Carbine, fourth-year doctoral student in the College of Education, and Christine Shea, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and was published in the Foreign Language Annals.
Funding for the project was supported by CSSI. Additional research incubation opportunities are available here.
To learn more about the CSSI researcher affiliate program and ways to become involved, click here.
Conducting your own survey? From development to testing and distribution, CSSI offers support through every stage of the survey process.