Drawing on Funds of Knowledge and Creating Third Spaces to Engage Students with Academic Literacies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v4i1.125Keywords:
Applied LinguisticsAbstract
The articles in the first section of this special issue contribute to a blurring of the boundaries between well-established binaries in education: between students’ home life and school life, between teachers and students, between academic essays and more informal modes of discourse, and between researchers and those they study. Grounded in specific local and historical contexts, these papers generate inspiring connections to two theories - funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and third spaces (Gutierrez, Rymes, and Larson, 1995) - that have much to offer research in academic literacies by pushing beyond traditional binary oppositions. In the funds of knowledge project (Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti, 2005), teachers are trained to research the resources and practices of students’ home communities and to draw on these resources in curriculum development and teaching. This approach complements the notion of the Third Space in which students’ unofficial discourses (or ‘counterscripts’) are ratified and incorporated into the work of the classroom alongside official school discourses and practices.
References
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Curry, M. J. (2003) Skills, access, and ‘basic writing’: a community college case study from the United States. Studies in the Education of Adults 35(1): 5–18.
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Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. and Amanti, C. (eds) (2005) Funds of Knowledge: theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gutierrez, K., Rymes, B. and Larson, J. (1995) Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom: James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education. Harvard Educational Review 65(3): 445–471.
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Velez-Ibanez, C. and Greenberg, J. (2005) Formation and transformation of funds of knowledge. In N. Gonzalez, L. Moll and C. Amanti (eds) Funds of Knowledge: theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms 47–69. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
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Equinox Publishing Ltd.