Funds+of+Knowledge

The idea behind Funds of Knowledge is that students come to school with a rich array of experiences which potentially can be tapped into as a part of the learning process. Consider the funds of knowledge the children of friends of mine bring to school. These three young people live on a small Appalachian farm. The boys know a lot about carpentry because their uncles who live in the same area are excellent carpenters. They know about tobacco farming because that is one way their family makes money. Growing tobacco is a complex process, entailing not just planting and caring for the plants but also processing them to get them ready for market. The boys know a lot about vegetable farming because their great-grandfather, who also lives in the area, grows and sells vegetables in the summer. The boys have also learned about automobile repair because their parents do most of their own work on the various vehicles they own and have owned. They can drive tractors and large trucks. They can split wood and stoke a coal fire. Their family's pipes freeze frequently, so they know about plumbing. Their parents built an addition on the house and the boys know how to put up sheet rock. Their father plays banjo, guitar, and bass. As a result, they know how to learn music independently of music teachers and how to learn by ear. They own a computer and the three boys are able users of it, along with the various game systems they own. They can kill and dress a deer and know how to handle guns safely. They can fish.

When we start with the familiar, it makes it easier for students to move to the unfamiliar. Growing tobacco requires a lot of math, including figuring out how many small starter plants you need for a given field, figuring out how much fertilizer and weed controllers to use, figuring out how much barn space you need to house the tobacco, figuring out how much you will make assuming you get a particular price for your crop, and then figuring out how much to save back for Uncle Sam. Math instruction that makes use of this knowledge allows students to work with schemas they have already developed and to connect new knowledge to what is already known, rather than having to create new understandings of math concepts that are seemingly unconnected to everyday life.

How do we find out what funds of knowledge students possess? Most of the time, people take their funds of knowledge information for granted and may not realize that this array of skills can be used in their learning. Figuring out what a student knows requires getting to know the student and his or her family. Listen for evidence of what the student does outside of school hours: sports, hobbies, lessons, various kinds of work. Listen for the kinds of jobs parents and other adults close to the students have.

Bourdieu--cultural capital. Walpole