Bodies of knowledge

These notes are part of a series for the book. This article really had two interwoven purposes. It was about:

A study group that teachers created with a team of researchers and anthropologists, to find out about ‘funds of knowledge’ that exist in students’ households; this part includes how they organized themselves, how they studied their students’ contexts, and how they shared knowledge and applied what they learned to their own teaching and curriculum
The funds of knowledge that exist in students’ households, including the fact that this exists

Gonzalez, N., Moll, L., Tenery, M., Rivera, A., Rendon, P., Gonzales, R., and Amanti, C. (2005) ‘Funds of Knowledge for Teaching in Latino Households’, in Hall, K., Murphy, P., and Soler, J. (eds) (2012) Pedagogy and Practice: Culture and Identities, London, SAGE Publications Ltd. in association with The Open University.

Outline

The research project
Parameters of teacher participation
The teachers
Teachers as learners
Teaching an “anthropological imagination”: teachers as reflective practitioners
Funds of knowledge as transformative principle
1. The Estrada family (Anna Rivera)
2. Reflecting on change (Martha Floyd Tenery)
Conclusion

Notes

The purpose of the study was to find out about the ‘funds of knowledge’ in the students’ households. ‘Funds of knowledge refers to those historically developed and accumulated strategies (skills, abilities, ideas, practices) or bodies of knowledge that are essential to a household’s functioning and well-being’ (Gonzalez et al., 2005, p. 117). Especially with working-class minorities, we think their households do not have legitimate knowledge. As a result, we do not make use of existing knowledge as a foundation for learning and we hold lower expectations for the students because of their perceived disadvantages.

The study was done in Tucson. There were 4 teachers, each of whom picked 2 to 3 students for the research. These elementary-school age students were primarily from Mexican-American working-class families. The teachers visited the students’ homes three times each, conducting interviews that lasted about 2 hours each. They also interviewed the student. Home visits specifically did not include teaching the parents or visiting for punitive reasons. They were about the teachers learning.

The teachers participated in an after-school lab, which supported them through this study. The researchers and anthropologists joined the teachers during the lab times. The teachers were learning about student households, and the researchers were learning about the teachers. The teachers adopted a reflexive process, with an option to use three ethnographic techniques:

Field notes: This involved transcribing the interviews from audio tapes and adding notes to them, during which many found that connections began to emerge.
Personal field journal: These were personal diaries of their reflections, feelings, and ideas.
Questionnaires: They felt this was a useful tool; it was a list of open-ended questions the teachers asked the families during the interviews, and it kept them focused on their inquiry.

Not surprisingly, they learned a lot from their interviews and home visits, including more about culture (as a practice instead of static set of typical foods, holidays, etc.), the personal lives of their students, and the backgrounds and values of their families. They were able to build this information into their curriculum to make the lessons more relevant to the students. The open-ended inquiry also formed bridges between the teachers and parents (and the extended neighborhood).

Feedback from the teachers included this: ‘They reiterated that theory and practice are really two sides of the same coin, and one without the other is limited’ (Gonzalez et al., 2005, p. 121).

Also about the connection of theory and practice: ‘The general consensus is that teachers are in need of time and support to move from theory to practice, or from field research to practice. They strongly affirmed that the labs or study groups provided an important way of maximizing time and combining resources, and of conceptualizing the pedagogical connection between classrooms and households’ (Gonzalez et al., 2005, p. 127).

To implement a similar program, they gave four tips:

Understand the theoretical concept of funds of knowledge
Make sure that home visits are done as participant observers
Create study groups (like their lab) for talking about the home visits, analyzing the new learnings, and reflecting on them
Make participation in the program voluntary