To open the symposium, approaches to designing heritage language education (hereafter HLE) programmes in Europe (Ackermann-Boström et al, 2024) will be presented and discussed. The approaches were developed in the Erasmus + project “Your Language Counts and are based on four perspectives that we argue HLE can be built on, namely language, knowledge, identity and interculturality. The language perspective is underpinned by the linguistic diversity that characterises HL classrooms, where students with varying language skills in their heritage language learn together (Cruikshank et al., 2024). We argue therefore that developing communicative competences in HLE necessitates emphasis on sociocultural and social competences as well as linguistic, sociolinguistic, discursive and strategic competences. The knowledge perspective concerns the differences between different kinds of language learning. Learning and teaching heritage languages is complex, as students often have a range of starting points. Starting from the knowledge-base and interests of the students in the HL group, and working with language through content offers potential in HLE. The perspective of identity is intrinsic in HLE, as language and identity are intertwined, and for multilingual children, understanding how the different languages they speak inform who they are is a central question. Moreover, as students in HLE by default have experience of and some degree of affiliation to at least two languages and cultures, their identities are also by default multilingual. We argue that validating multilingual identity development is crucial in HLE. Finally, the perspective of interculturality builds on the conviction that mutual respect for and interest in each other language varieties, cultures and ways of life is key in HLE. Intercultural competence combines empathy, respect for diversity, curiosity and openness, foundational competences in a democratic, globalised world (Liddicoat, 2011). In sum, these four perspectives position HLE in a broad ecological perspective (The Douglas Fir Group, 2016), where taking the context into account in organising, implementing, teaching and learning benefits learning and teaching. This in turn implies that the approaches will need to be adapted to suit the specific HLE context they may be implemented in, so they are meaningful and workable for teachers, students and families.

Ackermann-Boström, C., Oxley, S., & Reath Warren, A. (2024). Your Language Counts! Erasmus + Pilot model for HLE teachers. Cruickshank, K, Lo Bianco, J., & Wahlin, M. (Eds). (2024). Community and Heritage Language Schools Transforming Education. Routledge. Liddicoat, A. J. (2011). Language teaching and learning from an intercultural perspective. In Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 837-855). Routledge. The Douglas Fir Group. (2016). A Transdisciplinary Framework for SLA in a Multilingual World. Modern Language Journal, 100, 19–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12301