Video Illustrations for Funds of Knowledge and Inquiry into the Community

As a department, we are currently exploring ways to systematically embed inquiry and culturally responsive teaching across our programs. One of our first signature assignments is an Inquiry into the Community. However, because the assignment is relatively new, we do not have examples to share with our undergradute students. A colleague sent this email to me with some sample videos. Hopefully next year we will have some exemplars that we can add to our bank.

 

Mashainah found some great you tube videos that you may want to use to support the community inquiry project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkMBviL_ETA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b2hbCyGkV0

They focus on the concept of "funds of knowledge" ---check out Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti who wrote a lot about this--
basically funds of knowledge involves looking for assets and knowledge within the community. Here is a nice definition:  "funds of knowledge refers to those historically developed and accumulated strategies (skills, abilities, ideas, practices) or bodies of knowledge that are essential to a household's functioning and well being" Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti (2005, p. 91-92). These researchers worked with teachers to visit households where they engaged in dialogue with families and took ethnographic field notes. The teachers then took the funds of knowledge they learned about in their work with family and integrated into the curriculum. I have the book if you want to look at it--also there are journal articles.

Jenn