(Un)natural Bridges, (Un)safe Spaces: A Critical Qualitative Study of Spanish as a Foreign Language Educators’ Perceptions of Heritage Language Learners in Mixed Classrooms

Abstract

Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa has been an integral part of research on hybrid identities and consciousness. In an increasingly multicultural and multilingual school system, educators of Spanish as a foreign language are faced with a different audience to the ones they were trained to teach: students who identified as heritage language learners, for whom the Spanish language is part of their community life and their cultural identity. This critical qualitative study aimed to gather information on perceptions, beliefs, and instructional practices as expressed by several teachers of Spanish in a Midwestern school district. Informed by Anzaldúa’s teorías of conocimiento and the Coyolxauhqui process of dismembering and (re)membering identities, this critical research explored teachers’ perceptions and practices when students come from a Latinx backgrounds and therefore, belong to a linguistic community that constitutes the educators’ subject matter. By analyzing linguistic guidelines in the field of foreign language education and engaging in conversations with educators, this research examined questions of representation, linguistic and cultural prescriptivism, and the impact of colonizing theories of languages and cultures on heritage language students.