Strategies and Tools for Heritage Education in Spain

Spain is one of the countries with the highest volume of internationally recognised cultural heritage, most of which is regulated by state and regional laws. Managing all that heritage to make citizens understand it, know it and feel it as theirs involves educational actions that must be ordered, stable and sustained along time, as well as being solidly grounded. Thus, heritage education is a "key discipline" in heritage management and it aims to encourage citizens to preserve and transmit heritage in a respectful way not only towards the heritage itself but also towards the societies that have guarded and offered it throughout our history. In heritage education, Spain is an international reference with two powerful institutional tools, promoted by the government, aimed at coordinating the State and the Autonomous Communities: the Education and Heritage National Plan and the Spanish Heritage Education Observatory. We intend to describe both instruments, showing relevant data from some of the research based on them. The curriculum, conceived as a strategy which justifies the presence and reach of heritage in formal education, stands out as a third instrument for future planning. In this sense, we should plan appropriately the presence of heritage according to the different stages and levels of curricular development.