Funds of Knowledge - Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions.

Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching.

This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors'' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the ap