Drawing on Funds of Knowledge and Creating Third Spaces to Engage Students with Academic Literacies
Issue: Vol 4 No. 1 (2007) JAL Vol 4, No 1 (2007)
Journal: Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice
Subject Areas: Writing and Composition Linguistics
Abstract:
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.
Author: Mary Jane Curry
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