Power and Agency in Education

Abstract

T he purpose of this chapter is to explore the pedagogical dimensions of the Funds of Knowledge (FoK) framework and approach with a focus on the role of power and agency in the sites where such teaching and learning takes place. It is clear that educators continue to find both potential and challenge in developing appropriate methods for engaging increasingly diverse student populations in public school settings. Many educators seek not just to instruct but to inspire, connect with, and engage students in meaningful learning experiences. However, the racial/ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic differences that continue to exist between student populations and teachers in many educational settings produce an imperative to create teaching-and-learning environments that are characterized by mutual understanding among students and educators. Challenged further by the current meritocratic policy context that privileges conformity and standardization over responsiveness and inclusiveness, educators confront hegemonic forces that continue to shape public education for the majority of students living in poverty or who are ethnically, linguistically, and otherwise diverse. To more fully understand and appreciate the contributions to critical pedagogy offered by the FoK approach, this review takes up notions of power and agency within the pedagogical dimensions as they play out in the variety of settings documented in current literature. The key research questions guiding this review are the following:Research Question 1: What do we know from the Funds of Knowledge literature about the development and enactment of pedagogies within and beyond the formal classroom?

Do We Need More Productive Theorizing? A Commentary

“…A good example of this relation between theories about and for literacy is the questioning of deficit models of literacy grounded in sociocultural theories, such as funds of knowledge (e.g., Moll, 1990;Moll & González, 2004) and cultural-historical activity theory (see, e.g., Gutiérrez, Morales, & Martinez, 2009), both of which are theories about literacy and were imported from cultural anthropology. Yet, these theories have immediate implications for shifts in pedagogical perspective and have productively inspired research into how they can be implemented in practice (see, e.g., Rodriguez, 2013). 14…”

Crossing and Understanding: Funds of Knowledge among Romani Households

“…In funds of knowledge implementations, the anticipated transformation does not always occur (e.g., Marshall and Toohey 2010). To unpack the aforementioned laminated layers and address the power dynamics in the implementation (Rodriguez 2013), I suggest two additional important components: reflexivity and critical literacies. I adapt the activity theory (Engeström 1999), as illustrated in Figure 1, to visualize the connections among these components.…”

Intercultural and Community Schools. Learning to Live together

“…Considering all of the above, the need to cultivate a public intelligence aimed at placing value on the public sphere as a cultural and political space for participation is compatible with [53] Schools haven forgotten minority cultures, what some authors [54,55] have called the funds of knowledge of minority cultural groups, traditional knowledge and skills historically accumulated and culturally developed by each social group, which are indispensable as the basis for building new knowledge. A community is created through individuals, and then the capacity of generating dynamic identities, since identity and otherness are linked concepts aligned with the creation of networks and, by extension, with communities of learning [56] that are but a group of projects for the improvement of schools and their environments.…”