Transnational Funds of Knowledge: Building on Strengths of Children From Immigrant Families

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Foregrounding Silenced Voices: Understanding and Supporting Schools' and Teachers' Engagement With Linguistically Marginalized Families

Abstract

Purpose
This paper explores the transnational literacy practices and awareness of one student from an immigrant family. We argue that Adam’s transnational funds of knowledge informed the emergence of a cosmopolitan view on the world. We then identify instructional practices that honor and extend that knowledge.

Theoretical Frames
This study draws on a funds of knowledge perspective (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) and critical cosmopolitanism (Hawkins, 2014) to identify the cultural knowledge and abilities that children bring to literacy learning. “Critical cosmopolitanism” considers the “ideologies, positionings, and power relations among people that are integral to and inherent in place and represented, distributed and reified through the movements and flows of specific resources” (Hawkins, 2014, p. 91). Specifically, we noted how Adam’s funds of knowledge increasingly reflected a cosmopolitan awareness of the world and awareness of global inequities.

Methods, Data Sources and Analysis
This ongoing, longitudinal, collective case study draws on eleven years of data collection. Intentionally parallel data sets are collected each year by asking children to complete similar tasks. For example, every year we asked Adam to draw a picture of Morocco to explore change and continuity in his depictions. Data included observations of children at home and school, parent/student/teacher interviews, and student-created artifacts. Interviews focused on children’s school experiences, interests, literacy achievement, and literacy practices.
We coded interviews and field notes using a priori and emergent/grounded codes to explore children’s experiences across time. Our analysis suggests that transnational literacy practices contributed to Adam’s knowledge of the world and his emergent critical cosmopolitan stance.

Findings
Adam’s transnational literacy practices included reading international newspapers, attending the Mosque with Muslims from around the world, Skyping with relatives, speaking Moroccan Arabic, and memorizing the Qur’an. At the Mosque, he participated in public debates highlighting current global events. Adam’s teachers were unaware of these activities.
As we followed Adam through school, we witnessed an emergent cosmopolitan stance. For example, in eighth grade, Adam was the only student wearing a shirt that read, “Pray for Syria.” Later that year, when assigned to write an “argumentative essay,” Adam wrote about the Syrian civil war. Not only was Adam teaching his friends about Syria, but he was also involved in organizing and hosting a “fundraiser for Syrian children”. We end by identifying strategies used in undergraduate teacher preparation classes to honor and celebrate the important transnational funds of knowledge that some children bring to classrooms.

Significance
This longitudinal case study not only reveals the transnational funds of knowledge that Adam brought to classrooms, but also how transnational knowledge translated into a critical and humanizing view of the world.

Author

• Catherine F. Compton-Lilly, University of South Carolina