Learning to Resist: Foregrounding the Political Funds of Knowledge Rooted in Organizing Among Communities of Color

• In Event: Social Movements, Learning Sciences, and Possibilities for Transformation

Abstract

Purpose
The learning sciences, drawing on sociocultural research, has documented the widespread “household funds of knowledge” and related forms of “community wealth” that young people from non-dominant backgrounds bring to school (Moll et al., 1992). The literature on funds of knowledge, however, has tended to ignore or overlook political funds of knowledge, which offer resources and strategies for resisting oppression and building power. The objective of this poster is to document and describe the kinds of political funds of knowledge we observed in two organizing groups based in communities of color and the kinds of learning processes they reflected.

Perspectives
Inspired by Yosso’s (2005) use of Critical Race Theory to further academe’s conception of community cultural wealth, our multi-identified team took up her challenge to affirm legacies of resistance among People of Color and to illuminate forms of capital that arise from the experiences of racial marginalization and perseverance in a context of structural oppression. We drew on literatures documenting resistance (Friere, 1970; 1973; Giroux, 1983; Delgado Bernal 1998; Noguera & Cannella, 2006) and Yosso’s ideas on “the knowledges and skills born out of communities’ of color resistance to subordination” (2005, p. 80) to further our thinking on the political funds of knowledge that guide organizing among communities of color and other historically marginalized groups. These political funds of knowledge or repertoires of survival, learning, and action enable historically marginalized members of community organizations to participate in the public sphere—asserting pressure for change (Oakes & Rogers, 2006).

Methods and Data
Our research was carried out in partnership with two community organizing groups based in working class and low-income communities of color. Our primary method was observation of meetings and public events, accompanied by interviews with leaders of the groups. The corpus of data collected included 31 field notes and 14 transcribed interviews.

Results
We observed practices among two organizations that invited members to identify shared interests, strategize about social issues, and exert pressure in the public square. These practices promoted:

1. Organizational meeting contexts inclusive of the expertise of all parent and staff members (collective building);
2. Joint activities (i.e., discussions, lobbying, and community marches); and
3. Political education and issue framing of educational inequalities affecting their children

Our research honors the collective stances of resistance that are taken up and enacted by community organizations in a context constituted not only by decision-making power circumscribed within school districts and institutions, but also by the larger neoliberal, sociopolitical and socioeconomic landscape in which this context is embedded.

Significance
Ample research has documented the important role that community organizations can play in supporting historically marginalized/oppressed youth and adults, but few have drawn lessons from this body of research for how we conceptualize or design learning environments. Such work is important for the Learning Sciences as a field because it shows some of the practices that contribute to the formation and exercise of power by People of Color in a racialized political economy.

Authors

• Joshua Jared Prudhomme, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Daniela Kruel DiGiacomo, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Erica Jeanne Van Steenis, University of Colorado - Boulder