THE CENTRAL ROLE OF CRITICAL LANGUAGE AWARENESS IN SPANISH HERITAGE LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES: An Introduction

This chapter presents an introductory overview of CLA in the context of Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. It provides a discussion on the various “waves” of criticality that have moved the field of SHL forward since the early 1980s; each with a different vision of social justice in language studies. As the field advanced since the early days, scholars have taken up various issues that began with justifying the need to have a space for minoritized bilinguals and specialized instructional goals and objectives for such learners. Presently, advances in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics have paved a path toward what the editors of this volume call “the critical turn” in HL education wherein the sociopolitical issues that surround education and bilingualism are foregrounded. In addition to providing an overview of the book’s content, this chapter provides a historical and theoretical overview that serves as the foundation to understand the transformative proposals presented in the chapters of this volume.