Abstract
Funds of Knowledge (FK), Community Cultural Wealth (CCW), and Bourdieu’s analysis of capital (BAC) have each been applied in powerful ways to address complex issues of urban education; however, the overlaps and tensions between them have been largely underexplored. When brought together, these three economic metaphors—funds, wealth, capital—surface divergences and tensions that foreground questions of educational praxis and social justice. We argue the quest for social justice requires an approach that both validates and substantively utilizes learners’ FK and CCW and critically grapples with the pervasive logic of capital that has been impressed in the fabric of our educational system.
Keywords
Introduction
The struggle for educational justice in this era faces deep obstacles and barriers. Current education policies such as the expansion of school choice, decreased federal supports for entitlements, shrinking budgets, and a declining judicial climate for pursuing civil rights litigations—combined with populist rhetoric that is racist and xenophobic—have exacerbated inequities around the U.S., with differing but related trends and effects in other national contexts. This challenging context calls for educational research that contributes to revitalized critique and transformative pro-action against educational reproduction of existing inequalities. While research in the field of education has responded by increasingly taking up issues of racial and cultural diversity, there remains a critical need to center power and the political, both conceptually and pragmatically, in our analyses and on-the-ground work. Without intentionally grappling with and challenging issues of power that constrain the educational and life trajectories of minoritized students and their communities, we run the risk of reinforcing the deep seeded normalizations of schooling that reproduce stratification. Going forward, our efforts must “at minimum. . . resist the tendency to depoliticize. . . and withstand the inclination to ignore always-present historical and ideological dynamics and contexts” (Politics of Learning Writing Collective, 2017, p. 5). The complex, ambiguous, and ever-changing nature of this work necessitate our willingness and commitment as researchers in the field of education to learn from and with one another in sustained dialogue. As a powerful offering of scholarship, this special issue provides such an opportunity by engaging leading educational experts in a critical and multidirectional conversation about the conceptualization and application of three specific frameworks that have been used to promote social and educational justice: Funds of Knowledge (FK), Community Cultural Wealth (CCW), and Bourdieu’s analysis of forms of capital (BAC).
Over the past decade, these three frameworks—FK, CCW, and BAC—have been brought into conversation with one another through research and praxis that seeks to redress educational inequities. Urban Education has historically, and continues to be, a significant journal outlet for asset-based research that employs these frameworks to address a wide range of complex problems of urban education. FK, CCW, and BAC have been used by the journal’s authors to study and promote: (a) preservice and in-service teacher learning, including scholarship with emphasis on the experiences of teachers of color; (b) the teaching and learning of diverse student populations (i.e., Latinx, Black, Samoan American, Somali Bantu, Chinese American, Indigenous, English Language Learners, refugees, immigrants, first generation college students, students with disabilities, and incarcerated youth); (c) school leadership and culture; (d) parental and caregiver involvement; and (e) the impact of school-related practitioners and programs (e.g., counselors; intermediary school-community organizations; school-based student interpreter program). These studies have also spanned disciplines (e.g., mathematics, science, literacy, history, computer science, CTE, writing, physical education); K-16 grade-levels and educational contexts (e.g., special education; early childhood education, CTE, teacher education programs, newcomer programs, HBCUs, community colleges, dual-language programs, social networking sites); and K-12 school types (e.g., full-service community schools, public high schools, pilot schools, magnet schools, charter schools). Cumulatively, Urban Education scholarship has employed FK, CCW, and BAC to make a powerful impact on the education community’s understanding of how student and teacher heterogeneity can be transformed into pedagogical and curricular assets (e.g., gang knowledge, urban place-based knowledge, cultural, and linguistic resources, household practices) to address complex issues of urban education (e.g., teacher-student relationships, school-to-prison pipeline, using data, school culture, IEP process, funding, school choice, microaggressions and stereotyping, culturally relevant pedagogy, and curriculum) and promote myriad outcomes (e.g., academic achievement, educational attainment, labor market outcomes, college-going, increased sense of belonging and engagement, discipline-specific identity development).
FK, CCW, and BAC have each been applied in powerful ways to address complex issues of urban education; however, the theoretical, methodological, and practical overlaps and tensions that exist between these three frameworks have been largely underexplored. While the three economic metaphors of these frameworks—funds, wealth, capital—converge in many ways, they also, when brought together, surface divergences and tensions that foreground questions related to educational praxis and social justice. We argue that the quest for social justice requires an approach that both validates and substantively utilizes learners’ FK and CCW as curricular and pedagogical assets and critically grapples with the pervasive logic of capital that has been impressed in the fabric of our educational system. Without a critical examination of the relationship between (a) the nondeficit and asset-based reasoning of FK and CCW, and (b) Bourdieuian analytical critique of the reproductive educational operations of institutionalized forms of capital, important dilemmas of power and context are left unaddressed.
Bringing together leading educational experts in the conceptualization and application of FK, CCW, and BAC, this special issue aims to: (1) develop conceptual clarity for the theoretical and practical application of these frameworks to study and promote teaching and learning in urban educational contexts, both in the U.S. and internationally; (2) illuminate key tensions and opportunities that surface when applying these frameworks in practice to redress social and educational inequalities; and (3) (re)imagine possibilities for utilizing these frameworks, in complex and complementary ways, to create the conditions necessary for transforming educational opportunities for minoritized students. Engaging the frameworks’ leading scholars in a critical and multidirectional conversation, this special issue will grapple with practice- and system-level challenges that arise when using these frameworks to (re)imagine research, practice, and policy related to critical issues in urban education including pedagogy, curriculum, educational leadership, civic engagement, and racial justice.
Overview of Articles
The special issue is comprised of four papers that build conceptual and methodological clarity for using and expanding upon these frameworks both theoretically and in practice. In the first paper, Invisible Funds of Identity in Urban Contexts, Esteban-Guitart discusses and expands upon the extensive body of FK research (González et al., 2005; Moll et al., 1992) and the work it has inspired in international contexts of urban education to support the educational development of minoritized students, families, and communities. Cultural, linguistic, and identity diversity is a valuable resource for promoting high-quality, culturally relevant teaching and learning in urban education. The existing literature on funds of knowledge, in general, and funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2016) in particular, provides empirical evidence to support this claim. However, this research is largely focused on tacit knowledges, skills, and resources of students, their families, and communities. It can be argued that people may not be aware of certain invisible funds of identity such as hegemonic societal values and concepts (e.g., meritocracy, consumerist practices, colorblind narratives) that are so naturalized people may not think to refer to them. While these less tacit, invisible funds of identity undoubtedly mediate students’ behaviors and identities, they are often absorbed in the act. As a result, they are seldom addressed in research and practice as significant resources for teaching and learning. In this paper, Esteban-Guitart argues that holding a pedagogical place for the complex understandings of invisible funds of identity can promote expansive possibilities and educational practices that empower students and their communities to critically reflect upon and actively deconstruct dominant discourses.
In the second paper, An Overview of Community Cultural Wealth: Toward a Protective Factor against Racism, Acevedo-Gil and Solorzano clarify the conceptual origins and intent of CCW (Yosso, 2005), address (mis)interpretations and (mis)uses of the framework, and emphasize the essential role intersectionality plays in the conceptual, methodological, and practical application of CCW. Guided by critical race theory in education, Acevedo-Gil and Solorzano begin by discussing the conceptual origins and intent of CCW. Next, they provide an overview of research studies that exemplify Students and Faculty of Color accessing community cultural wealth. Finally, by framing racism as an everyday risk factor, they consider how CCW can be used as a protective factor when experiencing racism. In doing so, their paper offers valuable insight into how CCW can be used to reveal and address everyday acts and systems of racism and oppression that Students of Color experience as they navigate their PK-20 educational trajectories.
In the third paper, Toward a (Re)Integrated Application of Bordieuan Theory, McDonough and Abrica examine BAC (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986) as a framework that is effective for diagnosing the reproductive power of education and less effective for developing proactive solutions for pursuing educational equity, highlighting the symbolic violence that educational systems enact upon students and families who are unfamiliar with the codes of the “culture of power” by which capital selectively operates. McDonough and Abrica examine the many ways that educational researchers have limited and constrained the critical conceptualization and application of BAC to examine problems of urban education through selectively using the capital metaphor in isolation of Bourdieu’s other concepts—that is, habitus and field. They also explain how using the capital metaphor in isolation has produced deficit and harmful narratives about minoritized students, their families, and their communities. McDonough and Abrica offer a revitalized critique against the reproduction of educational inequities and explicate how Bordieuan Theory is useful toward these ends.
In the final paper, Surfacing Deep Challenges for Social-Educational Justice: Putting Funds, Wealth, and Capital Frameworks into Dialogue, Neri, Zipin, Rios-Aguilar, and Huerta synthesize and clarify—separately and together—the conceptual, methodological, and practical dimensions of FK, CCW, and BAC and (re)imagine the purpose and application of these frameworks, separately and together, across K-20 urban schooling contexts and toward greater social-educational justice. In dialogue with the papers in this special issue, Neri and co-authors argue that, without critical examination of the relationship between (a) the asset-based perspectives of FK and CCW, and (b) the reproductive power of institutionalized forms of capital, important dilemmas of power and context are left unaddressed, making it difficult to pursue equitable schooling outcomes for minoritized students. Drawing on Delpit (1988), Neri and co-authors argue: as long as capitalizing logics prevail in schools, the educational pursuit of justice requires both making curricular and pedagogic use of learners’ home- and community-based knowledge; and making the codes of power explicit and practicable for minoritized students.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
