Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms
The goal of the study was to develop innovations in teaching that draw upon the knowledge and skills found in local households. They are used in a social network to facilitate the development and exchange of resources, including knowledge, skills and labor, that enhances the household’s ability to survive or flourish.
Relationships are thick and multi stranded- they are more than one kind of interaction/relationship with the same person. Social relationship as well as “teacher” relationship for a particular skill or knowledge area.
In schools, classroom teachers know students to a limited context, they are isolated from the social world and does not have a ready access to funds of knowledge in the community
Children often play a more passive role in the classroom, furthermore, teachers don’t understand the environmental and psychological environments that their students are in.
Teachers and anthropologists worked together to conduct the interviews with families, but teachers were ultimately responsible for using the information to create lessons. The teachers worked collaboratively to try to develop lessons or learning modules based on the information they gained.
Furthermore, teachers identified various connection between the various funds of knowledge observed in homes and based learning modules on information that was both relevant to students, cultures as well as engaging on a personal level. If this is going on in classrooms, this will cause a domino effect, leading parents to be more involved in their children’s studies, then this will build teacher-parent relationships and break stereotypes and assumptions about individual student or cultures in general. These actions will compile interactively in a social manner over time.
Mahen Kariyakarawana
To DaVinci, From Imhotep 