Exploring Positionality and Agency in the Application of Funds of Knowledge and Community Cultural Wealth

• In Event: 34.035 - Funds of Knowledge, Community Cultural Wealth, and Forms of Capital: Strengths, Tensions, and Ethical Considerations

Abstract

This exploratory analysis examines the positionality and agency of Latina/o practitioners as they draw from community and familial knowledge in combination with formal professional knowledge in their roles as program and community leaders. The aim of this exploratory analysis is to understand the ways in which Latina/o educational professionals utilize their repertoire of professional training, experience, and personal background to define and carry out their roles in response to diverse student and family needs and strengths. In discussions of the need for greater diversity among all the ranks of educational professionals who conduct their practice in systems serving large populations of students of color, it makes both intuitive and practical sense to match the demographics of the former with the latter. What is often difficult to articulate, yet key to the consideration of the leadership assets of diverse professionals serving students of color in U.S. public schools, is the unique difference their practices make in the response to the needs and strengths of such populations. To address the challenge of naming the unique features of the leadership development and practices of Latina/o educational leaders, this exploratory analysis draws upon the theoretical and conceptual work established in the literature that seeks to create greater linkages between school and non-school sources of knowledge production. To understand how Latina/o educational leaders’ socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, linguistic, and/or immigration backgrounds factor into their professional practices, the analysis examines the more community-rooted assets that diverse professionals bring to bear in their work, as well as the process by which their leadership is developed. The analysis utilizes Vélez-Ibáñez’ and Greenberg’s (1992/2005) discussion of the formation and transformation of Funds of Knowledge, Yosso’s (2005, 2006) Community Cultural Wealth framework, and Van Leeuwen’s (2008) notion of the concept of recontextualization of social practice (with antecedents in Bernstein’s (1981, 1986) pedagogic recontextualization). These theoretical/conceptual frameworks become quite relevant to unpack key themes around the nature of the Latina/o leadership practices, including the resonance that such leaders have with their school communities’ experiences with poverty, contact with hostile social service providers, and vulnerability within socially isolating circumstances as parents, immigrants, and marginalized people. The analysis also reveals tensions that arise for Latina/o leaders in their agency and positionality as they navigate hegemonic social institutions and longstanding local political economic exclusion and inequity. The exploratory analysis introduces for discussion the notion of Latina/o educational leadership as recontextualized community knowledge and practice, which suggests that there is a complex process involved when diverse institutional agents apply knowledge that is produced under conditions of their past socioeconomic marginalization and exclusion.

Author

• Gloria M. Rodriguez, University of California - Davis