Chapter 10
Funds of Knowledge Supplement
Funds of knowledge has often been confused with other ideas like prior knowledge and background knowledge. Here we will discuss some of the major differences and what that means for your classroom.
Having worked with teachers for several years, inevitably once we talk about funds of knowledge, they say “Oh, you mean background knowledge,” or ask “Is that like prior knowledge?” or they say “I have always tried to get to know my students and be relevant in my classroom.” The concept of funds of knowledge is similar in some respects to these other constructs, but also significantly different. To understand the differences, it might be helpful to look into the origins of funds of knowledge as a term and as a research tool.
While the term was coined previous to 1992, Moll,Amanti, Neff, and González (1992) wrote one of the seminal pieces on funds of knowledge. Moll and the rest of the research team developed a qualitative way to connect the home to the classroom. This is something that teachers, for many years, had attempted to do. Moll, along with a teacher and two anthropologists, however, decided to situate the home–school connection within a cultural perspective of anthropology.
This is the first point of divergence between prior knowledge and funds of knowledge. Prior knowledge often has to do with what a student knows about a particular topic. The focus of analysis is on what the child knows. Therefore, the term prior knowledge can be seen as a more cognitive approach, somewhat along the lines of schema theory. It has to do with “knowledge” as something that exists in the mind that the student carries into the classroom from home, the community, books, previous classes, and so forth. Funds of knowledge, on the other hand, involves the study of “culture” or cultural practices that are resources for the survival of families and communities.
When you study funds of knowledge, you have to think like an anthropologist. You are looking at the ways people live, how they know things, and how they build relationships. In doing so, the data you are gathering comes from outside of your classroom, and is generally quite broad. For example, much of the initial research on funds of knowledge involved visiting homes and other community places to understand how and what people knew. Moll and other funds of knowledge experts then posited that one could use this information to develop curricula that would connect homes and schools. Of course, not everyone is able to visit homes, and it also has professional limitations. However, there are many other ways to gather information about what resources are in the home. See the activities on the companion website in Chapter 10 for some ideas. Some of the basic types of funds, as exemplified in the Moll et al. (1992) articles, would include the occupations of the caregivers, hobbies, religion, household chores, and even geographic information. These types of knowledges are used on a daily basis for survival and are often in flux. Compare this, again, to prior knowledge. The assumption in prior knowledge is that knowledge is learned and then remains relatively static. Since the individual holds knowledge, it is either there or not there. Funds of knowledge, however, emphasize the community or family unit as holders of historical and cultural knowledge. Thus this can change dramatically as the community or family adapts to new situations.
After understanding what resources are available in the homes or communities, the original intent of funds of knowledge work involved teachers planning themed units that emerged from the home analyses. These themes, then, required students to draw on knowledge from outside of the classroom, with people and things they were familiar with. The students needed to actively participate and engage in inquiry as well. After all, the theme was something they have access to. The teacher would need to be able to actively fit the “school stuff” into the theme. Thus, a themed unit of gardening, for example, could be used to teach about math, science, and literacy by exploring activities of gardening. Beyond the classroom, however, students may have access to parents who garden, to community gardens, and so on. Thus, the funds of knowledge became the central component to planning curricula, of course with the objectives of schools and standards in mind. Prior knowledge is generally used the opposite way. Rather than finding the funds and then planning the themed units, prior knowledge is generally used to find out what students know before a themed lesson or unit begins, which is also helpful, but starts from a different perspective. Within a high-stakes testing world, it is much easier to seek prior knowledge, especially since teachers often are handed a mandated and scripted curriculum. There are often no opportunities for themed units in which the themes emerge from outside of the classroom altogether.
Prior knowledge seeks the what question, but not the why or how. For instance, it is important to know what a student knows about plants before teaching a unit in life science about plants. However, how that was learned and why the child knew it are secondary questions. Funds of knowledge, however, does seek to understand the how and the why. Therefore, funds of knowledge seeks to make the community and home a part of the classroom and vice versa. This means that if there is a community or family resource that will help the learning in the classroom, then it should be used! A mother who works as a florist or a father as a mechanic can be useful classroom resources! In this way, the classroom and home can be deeply connected. Thus students are educated not just as students, but education is seen as educating the whole person.
It is often the assumption that getting to know the students will help you find and make connections with them. While this is true, is it enough? For instance, if you have a student who really likes video games, mentioning it once or twice is not the same as using a funds of knowledge approach. It may be helpful in making the unfamiliar familiar, but it isn’t what funds of knowledge does. So, if your student plays Pac-Man, and you can use the idea of Pac-Man to help the student understand greater than (>), less than (<), and equal to (=), by showing how Pac-Man eats the ghosts, then by all means, do that! But really that is just similar to a mnemonic memory device. Likewise, asking students what they know about photosynthesis and building from there is helpful, but does not seek to understand the practices in which photosynthesis is meaningful for students.
While funds of knowledge may be confusing, we hope this little explanation had shown how it differs from prior knowledge. There is one final point that should be made though. Funds of knowledge came out of a very specific context. It is situated within the history and culture of Arizona, even though it can be made more general. The researchers, early on in funds of knowledge, were attempting to understand how Latino/a students’ home lives, values, knowledges, practices, languages, and so forth could be validated in a school which was set up to privilege the majority group of mainstream white Americans. Thus funds of knowledge was born out of contest and struggle. It is not a neutral construct. It intended to leverage resources that were important to families and communities, but were not valued in schools, to accomplish both the goals of the schools and the goals of the families. It seemed to privilege the knowledges of out-of-school settings to accomplish in-school goals. Thus, it sort of leveled the playing field, which was usually tipped in favor of the dominant group. So, to understand where prior knowledge and funds of knowledge differs, we must learn to see this struggle. What is valued in the homes that is not valued in the school curriculum? How can those resources be used to accomplish objectives in classrooms, be it objectives of the community or the Common Core State Standards? How can teachers learn to use inquiry to qualitatively study their students and to build connections between homes and schools? How can a variety of home languages and literacy practices be used in schools to mediate learning?
References
Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for
teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into
Practice, 31(2), 132–141.