Heritage Language Blog ~ by HL Global Think Tank and FOHLC Europe

The Sydney Institute of Community Languages Education ( SICLE ) organised the “ Heritage / Community Languages education: New directions Online Conference ” which took place over several evenings in November 2025. The latest research in the field of Languages education, including Community / Heritage Languages and TESOL was shared.   Kati Varela opening the conference on November 4, 2025. There were presentations from new and experienced researchers who talked about a range of topics including assessment, inclusivity, leadership, bilingualism, online learning, teachers’ professional learning, intercultural understanding, entrepreneurship, learner engagement, and challenges in languages education. Each presenter had 30 minutes, including question time, and there were two presentations per evening. These presentations were free and will be available online. We asked our director, Ken Cruickshank, to talk about how the conference came about: Dr. Ken Cruickshank closing the conference...

From October 23 to 26, 2025, educators, researchers, and community leaders from across the world gathered to discuss Justice and Social Inclusion in the Teaching of Portuguese as a Heritage Language (SEPOHL) in Brussels, Belgium. The symposium celebrated the power of language to connect, resist, and empower, especially when community initiatives and universities work together to create a more equitable educational landscape. Some attendees from the final day of the VII SEPOLH in Brussels, 2025. From multiverses to multivoices The opening address by Dr. Ana Souza invited us to imagine the “multiverse ” of Portuguese as a Heritage Language — diverse, overlapping, and ever-evolving. She reminded participants that “the identity of POLH reflects the identity of its teachers”, and that linguistic justice depends on redistribution and political representation. Her words resonated strongly with the experiences of community educators across Europe, many of whom operate independently, often with...

For the last five years, FOHLC Europe has been collaborating with the U.S. Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools. Each October, the coalition holds its annual conference in Washington, D.C., now in a hybrid format, so participants from Europe can join online.  Participants learn about the recent developments in heritage language education in the U.S., and (re)connect. This year, several of us from FOHLC Europe attended the 12th Annual Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference: Better Together (October 3 - 5, 2025). As usual, the two days were packed with eye-opening presentations, discussions, workshops, panel discussions, and networking sessions. The conference is rich because the program not only includes talks from experts, but it also gives a podium to the language communities to showcase some of the things they are doing that are working.  Topics included teaching methods, certification, cultural literacy, heritage language learner identity and...

At our most recent FOHLC Café , we had a lovely meetup of fourteen professionals in heritage language education, who gathered online from Iceland, Netherlands, France, Spain, the U.S., England, and Ireland. They grabbed a cup of coffee and met up to get inspiration for how to motivate teenager language learners. One solution? Journalism works!   “When teens see a connection between French language and professional opportunities, their motivation increases significantly.” - Stéphanie Adelaide   Our first guest speaker was Danielle Capron in Germany. She teaches French heritage language learners in Frankfurt and was having trouble keeping the older students engaged. There were students quitting when they reached secondary education. Having had experience working at a radio station, Danielle had the idea to start a radio show project with her students. For 6 hours per month they created a program with content, interviews, and music – and once a month the students meet...

  The start of the journey On February 6, FOHLC Europe organized another free online Café for people involved in heritage language education. The theme of the 2025 cafés is a "Journey around the World," to hear from educators from different language backgrounds. This time, we heard from Rita Dorneles from Universidade de Aveiro and Juliana Azevedo from the Universidad Internacional de la Rioja / Universidad Internacional de Valencia, who talked about their experience with training educators of Brazilian Portuguese as a heritage language. Paving a path Rita and Juliana were exceptional in articulating why it is a tricky task to prepare individuals to educate children in a heritage language. It is more than just learning a language, the lessons must be engaging, and the teachers must be willing to share what works and what does not work in order to develop a pedagogy for this target group. There have been positive developments, but there is still a lot of work to be done: In tr...

By Sabine Little and Aga Pedrak FOHLC Europe , or Forum of Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe, is an exciting new collaboration between several organizations involved with heritage language education in Europe. With the FOHLC Europe steering group being geographically dispersed, it is not often that we get a chance to meet face to face, so it was a rare pleasure when Aga Pedrak from Ireland and Sabine Little from England got a chance to meet up at Nottingham Trent University’s roundtable on “Engaging with Language and Heritage” in March 2023 . The one-day conference was organised as part of the university’s Knowledge Exchange programme, an opportunity to bridge the gap between academia and other organisations, to learn from each other, and to create knowledge together. The event included attendees from museums and libraries, NGOs, storytellers, and, of course, academics.  The concept of language and heritage was, unsurprisingly, interpreted in many different ways. Intangible cu...