A Head Start Teacher's Understandings of Funds of Knowledge

• In Event: 54.062 - Parents and Family Involvement in Early Childhood

Abstract

This paper explores how a Head Start teacher took up the idea of Funds of Knowledge (FoK). The teacher participated in a 2 year-long professional development program that promoted a FoK approach. Findings show how Head Start served as a context for her learning and how FoK’s approach theoretically collided with Head Start’s compensatory discourses and practices. When the teacher recognized the contradictions present in similar practices with different approaches she was more apt to make changes to her Head Start practices. The paper considers both how power operates in a FoK approach and how thinking through tensions can contribute to new, and in this case more equitable, ways of thinking about practice.

Author

• Kristin Lyn Whyte, Mount Mary University