Dark funds of knowledge, deep funds of pedagogy: exploring boundaries between lifeworlds and schools

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2009

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Zipin, L.

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Journal article

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Discourse, 2009; 30(3):317-331

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Abstract

Among social justice efforts to make curriculum more engaging and achieving for‘less advantaged’ learners, the Funds of Knowledge (FoK) approach, as developed by Moll, Gonzalez and associates (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005;Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992), offers sound conception and a track record. The Redesigning Pedagogies in the North project (RPiN) significantly embraced this approach (with some methodological differences). In this paper I first outline how curriculum designed around funds of knowledge with use-value in learners’ life worlds challenges the exchange-value power by which competitive academic curriculum selectively privileges cultural capital embodied in elite social-structural positions. I then draw on both RPiN data and FoK literature to examine problematic tendencies to build curriculum around (1) light (i.e. positive)but not dark knowledge from learners’ lifeworlds; and (2) knowledge contents butnot ways of knowing and transacting knowledge (funds of pedagogy). In exploring these problem spots, I analyse how systemic boundaries between lifeworlds and schools pose constraints for recontextualising funds of knowledge into schoolcurriculum.

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Copyright 2009 Taylor and Francis

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