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This article discusses a sociocultural approach we have developed, which we refer to as funds of knowledge. The emphasis of the funds of knowledge work has been to develop both theory and methods through which educators can approach and document the funds of knowledge of families and re-present them on the bases of the knowledge, resources, and strengths they possess, thus challenging deficit orientations that are so dominant, in particular, in the education of working-class children. In this article, I present a translocation view of funds of knowledge and what we can learn theoretically and methodologically from this body of work. I review four studies conducted in different countries and sociocultural contexts. In each context, the researchers reorient the concept of funds of knowledge to address issues germane to their settings. The four studies from New Zealand, Spain, Australia, and Uganda used funds of knowledge to generate new ideas and positionalities regarding work with teachers, students, and families. None of the projects simply replicated the original studies conducted in the United States. The four studies documented empirically and represent pedagogically families and students as resourceful and helped educators arrange environments that are academically sound and strongly oriented to building on such resources for learning.

This article presents a variety of issues related to the effects of restrictive language and educational policies that ultimately limits important resources for English language learners (i.e., services, funding, time, and information). The authors spotlight the state of Arizona as an unfortunate case of language control through policies, which has the promise of being replicated in other areas of the United States. As these forms of control make their way into everyday classroom life, English language learners are further stripped from essential educational opportunities when denied the right to draw on their own social, cultural, and linguistic resources for learning.

The main purpose of this paper is to articulate a theory of human identity from a Vygotskian perspective. In doing so, we use the term “funds of identity” inspired by the “funds of knowledge” approach. We use the term funds of identity to refer to the historically accumulated, culturally developed, and socially distributed resources that are essential for a person’s self-definition, self-expression, and self-understanding. Funds of knowledge—bodies of knowledge and skills that are essential for the well-being of an entire household—become funds of identity when people actively use them to define themselves. From our point of view, identity is made up of cultural factors such as sociodemographic conditions, social institutions, artifacts, significant others, practices, and activities. Consequently, understanding identity requires an understanding of the funds of practices, beliefs, knowledge, and ideas that people make use of.

Background/Context Arizona's most recent English Language Learner (ELL) legislation, starting in the school year 2008-2009, requires all such students be educated through a specific Structured English Immersion (SEI) model: the 4-hour English Language Development (ELD) block. The basic premise behind this particular model is that ELL students should be taught the English language quickly so they can then succeed academically. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study is the first attempt to look at a random sample of school districts across the state of Arizona under the 4-hour ELD block policy. The goal of the study is to better understand what are the positive aspects and the major challenges of implementing the 4-hour ELD block in Arizona. In particular this study aims to answer the following research questions: (1) How is the 4-hour ELD block being implemented? (2) What are the perceived benefits of the 4-hour ELD block for students and for schools? and (3) What are the district leaders’ concerns about implementing the 4-hour ELD block? Population/Participants/Subjects Of the 65 school districts randomly selected as potential participants, 26 agreed to participate in this study. The district response rate of the study was 40%, and the informants were the English Language Coordinators (ELC), who are the individuals most knowledgeable about how the 4-hour ELD block is implemented in their district. The sample of school districts that participated in our study is representative of the state of Arizona in terms of enrollment patterns. Research Design The researchers designed a phone survey for ELCs. Qualitative data analyses were used to examine the responses of the 26 ELCs. More specifically, a coding scheme was created to assist in the process of organizing and analyzing the data. Findings/Results Analyses reveal that the vast majority of ELCs think that, as a result of the program, there is an increased focus on English Language Learner (ELL) students’ English language development. Regarding the challenges of the program, ELCs think that the implementation of the 4-hour ELD block has: a) neglected core areas of academic content that are critical for ELL students’ academic success, b) contributed to ELL students’ isolation, c) limited ELL students opportunities for on-time high school graduation, and d) assumed that English language learning can be accomplished within an unrealistic time-frame and under a set of unrealistic conditions. Conclusions/Recommendations Given the data collected, we recommend that school districts explore alternative models of ELD instruction. These alternative models of ELD instruction need to take into consideration the local context of school districts, their resources, and existing research. Furthermore, we recommend that ELL students are offered additional programs or types of support that can help them become English proficient, while acquiring the academic content needed for succeeding in school. It seems reasonable to state that a combination of programs and support can be more effective than one prescriptive instructional approach. Finally, we recommend that school districts monitor progress and effectiveness by looking at multiple indicators. In particular, we strongly suggest that school districts keep track of reclassification, re-entry, and opting-out rates.

For the past few years we have been developing a longitudinal study of biliteracy development in children by following, all within the same dual-language school, a case study cohort of 20 students throughout their elementary school years. This cohort sample represents considerable diversity in terms of ethnicity, social class, and language proficiencies upon starting school, with just a few children fluent in both Spanish and English as early as kindergarten. The study reveals that all students, not only those in our study sample but in the entire school, and regardless of their sociocultural characteristics or initial language profile, became literate in both languages. Our analysis identifies several characteristics that give the school its additive personality. For present purposes, we highlight only three such characteristics. One is that the school features, in contrast to most high-poverty schools, a highly qualified and diverse teaching corps, most of them (88%) female, as is the norm. All of the instructors are certified bilingual teachers--most hold a master's degree or higher--and have taken academic courses in both Spanish and English and have taught in a dual-language program for more than 9 years. This highly qualified staff not only help give the school its academic emphasis and direction, its academic identity we could say, but also facilitate a particular social setting, cultivating a supportive environment for the development of biliteracy in all students in which the teachers, among other things, protect the students (and themselves) against the often blatant attacks and insults by English-only advocates. A second characteristic relates to the deliberate development of confianza (mutual trust), a term borrowed from our analysis of household funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, in press). In the original work, we used it to refer to the necessary trust households need to establish social relations of exchange; in fact, we referred to confianza as the glue that held the households' multiple (and sometimes fragile) social networks together. Here we extend this concept to refer to the nature of the social relationships among administrators, teachers, and students that help establish the particular "culture" of the school; a culture of caring, if you will, to borrow from Noddings (e.g., 1992), that came to characterize the school and helped define who these teachers are in relation to each other and to the children (see also, Bryk & Schneider, 2002). In particular, the administrators entrust the teachers to help make pedagogical and policy decisions for the school. This trust helps teachers define themselves as a particular type of professional, and as a particular type of person, with the necessary funds of knowledge to make curricular decisions that help define the nature of the educational relationships in the school. A third characteristic is that of ideological clarity. The teachers became well aware of how much teaching is a political activity, especially after defending the children's language rights in their efforts to preserve the current dual-language arrangement. It would be accurate to state that the administrators and teachers are constantly vigilant of any attempts to either alter the dual-language agenda of the school or impose an English-only curriculum and do not hesitate to activate the school's social network of parents and other allies to defend the school. In this setting, therefore, biliteracy is, without vacillation, a clear academic goal promoted through a duaManguage pedagogy and sustained by an ideology that favors the development of both languages in all children. The school, consequently, is not only successful in producing biliterate students, a rare achievement in U.S. schools, but also successful despite the heavy ideological and programmatic pressures of the state to dismantle bilingual education, a consequence of the state's English-only language policy, and the current emphasis on high-stakes testing, also conducted only in English. …

The work in this article has a basis in a long-term research paradigm investigating the "funds of knowledge" of diverse populations. This conceptualization adopts an anthropological perspective for viewing the households of low-income and minority students as repositories of diverse knowledge bases. In the BRIDGE project, the focus has been on understanding the mathematical potential of households, as well as "mathematizing" household practices. The transformation of mathematical knowledge, however, has been somewhat problematic. Our experience until now indicates that, whereas other classroom knowledge domains (language arts, social studies, etc.) may draw in a rather straightforward fashion from households, mathematical knowledge may not be so easily incorporated. This article describes a theoretical refinement of the concept of funds of knowledge, and will endeavor to conceptualize the distributed nature of mathematical community capital.

In this conversation, a group of educators discuss professional development and identity, representation in academe, assessment of linguistically diverse students, current movements in literacy instruction, teaching style and process of instruction, content of instruction, and teacher training from their perspectives as Latino and Latina researchers.