Paper short abstract:

This presentation introduces the concept of ‘community funds of knowledge and identity’. We share highlights from the ‘Comms4Learning’ project which generates and analyses socio-educational ecosystems to strengthen ties between community agents and foster contextualised and meaningful learning.

Paper long abstract:

Funds of knowledge theories emerged in the 1980s to combat deficit perspectives of certain groups of students and under-represented communities, with a view to promoting more socially just educational practice (universal participation under conditions of equality) (Moll et al., 1992). Focused initially on detecting funds within families and households, the funds of knowledge approach was later complemented by funds of identity theories (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014) which turned their attention to individual learners. In recent developments, a third stage has been proposed in which attention is shifted from households and learners to the communities they inhabit. Understood as ‘the historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge, skills, and personal/social identifications embedded in particular geographical spaces, social institutions, or any educational resource available in any community’ (Esteban-Guitart et al., 2022, p. 307), the concept of ‘community funds of knowledge and identity’ shifts the unit of analysis from households or individual learners to communities. This concept has been explored in depth in the project ‘Comms4Learning’ which aims to i) strengthen ties between different community agents to promote collaborative action in educational settings; ii) foster contextualized learning processes which harness community resources as educational opportunities and have personal and social value; iii) identify the conditions needed to advance such actions as well as the impact of educational projects involving processes of co-creation and co-design within the framework of a socio-educational ecosystem. In this presentation, we will share initial results from one of the distinctive socio-educational ecosytems generated and analyzed within this project.