16.3224, Review: Applied Ling: Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3224. Tue Nov 08 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3224, Review: Applied Ling: Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti (2005)

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1)
Date: 08-Nov-2005
From: Nathaniel Carney < natcarn at gmail.com >
Subject: Funds of Knowledge 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:20:49
From: Nathaniel Carney < natcarn at gmail.com >
Subject: Funds of Knowledge 
 

EDITOR: Gonzalez, Norma E.; Moll, Luis; Amanti, Cathy
TITLE: Funds of Knowledge 
SUBTITLE: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and 
Classrooms 
PUBLISHER: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
YEAR: 2005 
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2111.html 

Nathaniel Carney, unaffiliated scholar

PURPOSE

This book consists of a number of chapters describing the original 
funds of knowledge project carried out in Tucson, Arizona, and other 
chapters detailing both participants' experiences in this project, as well 
as funds of knowledge-based projects carried out in places other than 
Tucson, Arizona.  The funds of knowledge approach to education is 
based in the idea of connecting teachers with their communities 
through ethnographic study of the communities in which they live, 
particularly household visits and interviewing.  In this book, the editors 
make the point that the funds of knowledge approach is an alternative 
to some current trends in education toward general testing of students 
and broad generalizations about student backgrounds and culture 
when developing curriculum.  While the book could have a broad aim 
and audience, perhaps it will be particularly of interest to K-12 
teachers, teacher trainers, and researchers in education and 
anthropology. 

SUMMARY

The book is divided into a preface and then four parts.  In the preface, 
the three editors of the volume each introduce themselves and their 
part in starting the Funds of Knowledge project.  In addition, they 
provide a brief summary of their individual fields and theoretical 
frameworks which they brought to the study.  Their different 
perspectives include ethnography, insights from Vygotskian theory, 
and insights from the field of education.

Part I of the book, entitled "Theoretical Underpinnings", consists of 
four reprinted articles which give an overview of the funds of 
knowledge project, from a theoretical, design, and practice 
perspective.  

The first chapter in Part I problematizes the world culture.  The 
proposal is made the term culture is often a narrow concept that leads 
to broad generalizations about practices and customs which are often 
inaccurate when a detailed investigation of individuals within a 
community are examined.  The author talks about the "hybridity of 
culture", which expresses the fact that culture is often made up of a 
myriad of practices by individuals and families and does not fit into any 
singular set of norms or customs. 

The second chapter in Part I provides an broad ethnographic 
overview of the U.S.-Mexican peoples living in the southwestern 
area of the United States where U.S. and Mexican culture often blend 
together.  The chapter details both through historical perspective and 
case study some of the characteristics and diversity that exist among 
U.S.-Mexican populations.    

The third chapter in Part I tells how qualitative research was used to 
investigate individual household practices and inform pedagogical 
innovation.  This chapter includes some edited transcripts from a 
presentation made about the qualitative research conducted by one of 
the teachers and an anthropologist involved the funds of knowledge 
project, and the presentation transcripts serve to describe the 
research approach and some of the results. 

The final chapter in Part I elaborates on how home visits and 
interviews were carried out in a working-class neighborhood in 
Tucson, Arizona.  Also, details about the actual project, such as 
information about the teachers involved and some cases studies of 
particular teachers' home visits, are given.

Part II of the Funds of Knowledge book is titled "Teachers as 
Researchers", and the articles in this part are written by six of the 
teachers who participated and conducted interviews in the initial funds 
of knowledge project.  

The first chapter in Part II, written by Martha Floyd Tenery, is a 
narrative of her visits to households, and she gives details about the 
visit and how her skills as an ethnographer developed over the course 
of her visits.  She concludes her chapter mentioning how she sees her 
role of 'teacher' as a mediator in various ways.

The second chapter in Part II is the story of another one of the 
teachers, who also is one of the editors for the Funds of Knowledge 
book, Cathy Amanti.  Amanti includes field notes from some of her 
visits, and she writes about how she was able to try to incorporate 
some of the learning from her visits into her classroom curriculum.

The third chapter in Part II is written by Marla Hensley.  Hensley talks 
about her home visits and she writes about finding many talents in her 
students' parents which could be tapped to help with school projects.  
One student's father writes a musical for the school, while some other 
students' family members have quilting experience which inspires the 
beginning of a quilting project for the students.

The fourth chapter in Part II is written by Patricia Sandoval-Taylor.  In 
her chapter, Sandoval-Taylor tells how the knowledge garnered from 
the funds of knowledge interviews she conducted eventually led to the 
development of a new learning module for her classroom teaching on 
the topic of construction.  At the end of her chapter, Sandoval-Taylor 
includes some compelling written pre and post-tests that were given to 
her students before and after the learning module was implemented.

The fifth chapter in Part II, by Anne Browning-Aiken, details 
ethnographic study undertaken by Browning-Aiken during her doctoral 
work in anthropology.  She centers in on the topic of border crossings 
and the influence of mining on Mexican-U.S. families.  In her chapter 
she specifically writes about her interviews with one particular family in 
the school district where the funds of knowledge project was taking 
place. 

The final chapter in Part II is by Jacqueline Messing.  In this chapter, 
Messing looks at the reflections of the teachers involved in the funds 
of knowledge project.  She includes transcripts from teachers and 
shows how teachers developed in various ways through participation 
in the funds of knowledge project. 

Part III, entitled "Translocations:  New Contexts, New Directions", 
presents some research that was done in different areas and contexts 
from that of the previous chapters, all of which had taken place in 
Tucson, Arizona.

The first chapter in Part III is the account of a team ethnographic study 
in southern Louisiana which had researchers working along with 
teachers studying the local populations, particularly families involved 
in offshore oil drilling.  In this case, the teachers' funds of knowledge 
approach research contributed to the overall data that was being 
collected for the ethnographic study. 

The second chapter in Part III tells how the funds of knowledge 
approach was used in a Master's level teacher training program.  
During the program, teachers, many of whom were of white, middle-
class backgrounds, made visits to urban, low-income neighborhoods 
largely populated by minorities where they students would potentially 
live.  Teachers later completed research projects related to the 
neighborhoods they visited and studied.  

The third chapter in Part III details the reexamination of data from visits 
made to fourteen Puerto Rican family households from 1996-1999 in 
New York City.  The reexamination's focus is an analysis of household 
literacy practices in the households.  The value of looking at such 
local literacy practices is said to have great benefit for locally sensitive 
curricular and teacher development.     

The fourth chapter in Part III is written by two of the editors along with 
two other authors, and it is a Vygostkian analysis of how household 
mathematical practices and school math practices might be able to 
coincide more.  The authors spend time both explaining Vygotskian 
learning theory as well as showing how it might be applied to research 
data garnered from the funds of knowledge interviews.  

In the final section of the book, Part IV, entitled "Concluding 
Commentary", Luis Moll, one of the editors, gives both a critique of 
certain current trends in public education, and offers suggestions as 
to what might be gained from application of research espoused by the 
funds of knowledge approach.   

EVALUATION

"Funds of Knowledge" does an excellent job of detailing what the 
original funds of knowledge project was about, and how the funds of 
knowledge approach might benefit teachers and researchers 
engaging in such an educational approach.  While most of the book 
centers in on the funds of knowledge project as it was carried out in 
the Tucson, Arizona context, the inclusion of Part III in this book 
greatly broadens the book's appeal since in gives researchers and 
educators in other areas an idea of how the approach might work in a 
different context.

Another positive point to mention about this book is that its tone is 
both academic as well as testimonial.  In other words, it includes both 
significant research as well as individual commentary and reflection 
from the participants.  It is a readable volume, neither being overly 
technical nor overly simplistic about the subject matter.

Considerable time is spent by different authors in the book on 
describing household visits and the funds of knowledge's unique 
approach to household visits.  As the authors of chapter 5 (the final 
chapter in Part I), "These are research visits, for the express purpose 
of identifying and documenting knowledge that exists in students' 
homes" (p. 89).  The importance of ethnographic household visits 
seems integral to the funds of knowledge approach, and the book 
does a good job, albeit sometimes a repetitive job, in describing both 
actual visits as well as the procedure for making these visits.  Thus, 
the reader of this book can gain concrete information about 
implementing this essential element of the funds of knowledge 
approach.

For a reader already familiar with the original funds of knowledge 
approach, this book may not offer a great deal of new insight, but for a 
teacher and/or researcher unfamiliar with the project, this must be the 
definitive text.  The only clearly lacking feature in this book, according 
to this reviewer, is that there are not enough accounts of funds of 
knowledge approaches in contexts beyond that of the southwestern 
United States.  Of the four chapters in Part III, really just the second 
and third are general pedagogically-focused applications of the funds 
of knowledge in contexts beyond Tucson.  More applications of the 
funds of knowledge throughout the United States would be welcome.

Perhaps that is what the authors are hoping as well.  If this book's 
unique approach to connecting teachers with the local context and 
households where they work garners more widespread interest, 
perhaps another volume, full of funds of knowledge applications in 
various contexts, will be possible.  While not explicitly a guidebook 
about how to conduct funds of knowledge projects, Funds of 
Knowledge gives the reader ample information about the original 
project so that they might feel the confidence of trying to apply the 
principles of the funds of knowledge approach in their own context. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Nathaniel Carney received his MA in TESL from Penn State 
University, and currently is the head teacher at Freude Language 
Centre in Kyoto, Japan.  His research interests include assessment of 
intercultural competence, pedagogical application of sociocultural 
learning theory, and telecollaboration for language learning.





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