Advances in SHL education in institutions of higher education

Research on Spanish heritage language (SHL) education has grown exponentially in the last two decades. At the same time, Spanish heritage language (SHL) programs continue to multiply across the United States (Beaudrie; 2012; Beaudrie & Rivera-Marrero, forthcoming). SHL programs can promote academic success for Latinx students who see their language and culture reasserted (Pascual y Cabo and Prada, 2022). In turn, valuing their heritage language skills and supporting their language development can help Latinx students expand their multilingual abilities for use with their families and communities, as well as in professional contexts. This presentation will review research specifically centered on SHL programs in an effort to extract best practices for program development. As world languages departments undertake the task of building their heritage programs, this presentation will help inform decisions on how to allocate resources and set priorities in order to enhance their chances of success.