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Critical Knowledge Beyond the School: Teachers as The-Ones-Who-Learn, the final volume of the Discovering Our Experiences series, was published in the Fall 1997. The volume features the work of members of our Teacher Research Collaborative, a group that included elementary and secondary school teachers, principals, as well as the university faculty researchers.

The compilation of papers featured in this volume represents the work of the university faculty and teachers that participated in the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project (FKT).

Volume 4 (pdf file) is included at the end of this post.

The Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project is an educational model focused on the professional development of teachers learning about their students through home visitations. The project is designed to facilitate teachers to adopt innovative curriculum paradigms to work effectively with culturally and linguistically diverse students. The FKT project relies on inquiry and reflection to foster teachers’ creativity, strengthening their investigative, research skills based on anthropological cultural perspectives. The collaborative research group, consisting of four faculty members from the University of Houston and eight teachers from the Houston area schools. In the academic year-long project, university and school participants engaged in monthly workshops, refining their research capabilities, providing reflection and feedback, and organizing their data, and writing-up their final report.

All the teachers work with diverse student populations, which is perhaps the most significant motivator for becoming involved in exploring and developing alternative ways to make the curriculum more meaningful and responsive to their students’ needs.

One of the crucial factors that facilitated the transformation process was the ethnographic techniques employed by the teachers to gain insights into their students’ and their families’ way of life. By temporarily relinquishing their teaching responsibilities and assuming the role of ethnographers, the educators exhibited distinctive teaching and learning methodologies.. As researchers, they delve into their learning journey through a personal and experiential lens, providing valuable insights and lessons for other teachers to examine.

The FKT final reports written by the teachers are featured in this volume.

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SECTION ONE

Dr. Leslie Patterson’s work focuses on the foundational aspects of the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project. Two pivotal questions take center stage:

Q1 What is the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project, and how is it implemented?

Q2 How can collaborative teacher research that involve the university and public school teachers lead to student academic improvement?

Included in this section is an excerpt from Dr. Patterson’s article, with co-author Dr. Sheila Baldwin, “A New Look at Parent Involvement,” as well as her complete article, “Teachers as The-Ones-Who-Learn.”

SECTION TWO

Excerpts from the featured articles by the FKT collaborative teachers. Page numbers refer to articles in the embedded PDF file.

Dr. Shelia Baldwin: Lessons From the Heart: A Teacher’s Journey Toward Advocacy (pp. 13–21)

E.K. Keith: Bridging the Gap Using Funds of Knowledge in the Classroom (pp. 22–24)

Rubén Gonzales: From the Funds of Knowledge to a Parent Partnership (pp. 29–33)

Jennifer Lauren Jones: A Full Circle of Understanding: Immersion Into Your Student’s Environment, Departure From Your Own (pp. 34-36)

Deborah Shafto: Funds of Knowledge That Diminish Borders and Create New Dimensions (pp. 37–41)

Patricia Lumpkin: Professional Reflections: Funds of Knowledge Research (pp, 42–48)

Dr. Glenn DeVoogd: Making It Real: Discover the Value of Home Visits (Full article in PDF issue, pp. 49–50.

SECTION THREE

Article by Dr. Irma Guadarrama provides reflective thinking on the FKT project: Breaking the Silence: Inquiry, Reflection, and Voice in Teacher Research Collaboratives.

Creative Commons Attribution

Unless otherwise noted, content on Bilingualfrontera.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). You may share and adapt the material for noncommercial purposes only, provided you give appropriate credit, link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

Note on Images

Some illustrative images in this post are AI-generated and are used solely for presentation purposes; they are not archival photographs from the original project.

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As we look for those alternative models, we have discovered that physical scientists – biologists, physicists, and mathematicians – have begun to study what they call complex adaptive systems. Ecosystems, the weather, and some computer programs are all complex adaptive systems. This article will explore the principles underlying those systems to explore whether they are applicable to our work with students and parents.

Funds of Knowledge Projects Promote Self-Organization

Within this context, we suggest that inquiry and conversation can open the information flow between the school and the home when teachers become researchers in a Funds of Knowledge Project (Gonzalez, Moll, Floyd-Tenery, Rivera, Rendon, Gonzales & Amanti, 1993; Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992). They go out into the community, into the students’ homes, and use both inquiry and conversation to learn more about what funds of knowledge are present in that home community that can support school learning. The large arrow in the figure below represents the potential information flow in funds of knowledge projects. (p.28)

Opening those boundaries between classroom and home communities through a funds of knowledge roject can result in surprising and rewarding learning for parents, for students, and for teachers. This new learning, this unpredictable self-organization of ideas, knowledge, and ideas, leads to new behaviors for individuals, but it can also lead to self-organization across the whole system that can mean a dramatic change in the ways parents and teachers work together. It can mean a growing sense of trust between parents and teachers. It can mean a powerful sense of reassurance and confidence in the future as students see their parents and their teachers in new relationships. These dramatic system-wide changes will lead to many particular changes in the decisions made by parents, by teachers, and by students themselves. Those decisions are totally unpredictable and particular to individuals but can also lead to significant programmatic decisions.

The articles in this volume are filled with those decisions which were absolutely inconceivable when we began this project. The inquiry and conversations required by a funds of knowledge project that led us far beyond our old notions of parent involvement. We now understand that we are not in control of parent involvement as teachers. We are just one part of this amazing self-organizing system. We are beginning to understand that it is our role to open the boundaries so that information can flow in all directions through these complex systems we call school and home. We are beginning to understand that through inquiry and conversation we can invite everyone to participate in these amazing self-organizing systems we call home and school.

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TEACHERS AS THE-ONES-WHO-LEARN

Dr. Leslie Patterson

As a teacher educator, I have “done” multicultural education by trying to infuse my teaching with facts about diverse cultures. I assigned readings from folklore, research reports on cultural practices and linguistic differences, and powerful statements by social and political activists. Apparently, I thought that the more my students and I learned about the diverse cultures of the children in our schools, the more tolerant and supportive we would be in our attitudes and actions. I thought that information alone would prepare teachers and future teachers to build a response with curriculum to plan instruction with students’ strengths and needs in mind. I think I also had a vague notion that this information would encourage teachers to take some sort of social action outside the classroom. As I consider it now, all that reading and walking never seemed to make much of a difference.

My recent experience as a research team member in the study modeled after the Funds of Knowledge project begun by mole and his associates (Gonzalez, Moll, Floyd-Tenery, Rivera, Rendon, Gonzales & Amanti, 1993; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) has convinced me that I can find more powerful ways to invite teachers to develop cultural sensitivity and a willingness to take social and political action. Secondhand information is not enough – we must make opportunities for teachers to go outside the school to go into the community to get to know the students in their homes and to create their own information firsthand. Christine Sleeter applies the same principle to students:

“To empower students to participate effectively in their civic community, we must change the ways in which they acquire, view, and evaluate knowledge. Students must also be given the opportunities within themselves so that they can develop a sophisticated appreciation of the nature and limitations of knowledge and understand the extent to which knowledge is a social construction that reflects the social, political, and cultural context in which it is formulated.” (Sleeter,1992, p. 126).

This potential for transformation became clear in my interview with the two secondary teacher researchers in the project list, Liz Keith and Shelia Baldwin. The families Liz and Shelia chose to invite into this project were similar in several ways. Both families were from Mexico, although one family had been involved in migrant farm work around the US for 18 years, recently settling in the city, and the other family had recently come from Matamoros, where the entire family had managed a photography business. The students in these families were generally well-behaved and, to some extent, successful in their schoolwork.

Liz and Shelia were not acquainted with each other before this project, but they have worked productively together and recently collaborated on a proposal to present at a professional conference. They are, however, at very different points in their careers. Liz is at the beginning of her career when the project began. Liz had taught English in an inner-city middle school for one year and was beginning to work on her initial teacher certification. Shelia had taught reading and English as a second language in a large suburban district for 16 years with previous experience as a social worker in Chicago. During the course of the project, she finished a doctoral program in reading and multicultural education. She has taught as an adjunct in a teacher education program, has led numerous staff development sessions, and is a published teacher researcher.

Although Liz and Shelia are at very different places in their individual professional development, their interview responses suggest that they experienced parallel transformations in three areas: 1) they found themselves challenging old assumptions about their students; 2) they made complex instructional changes in response to their findings from the home visits; 3) they began taking on new professional roles outside their classrooms; and 4) they made discoveries about ethnographic research. They both attribute these changes to their home visits and subsequent reflections on the funds of knowledge present in these students’ home cultures. Although Liz’s and Shelia’s separate articles detail their individual findings, the following discussion summarizes the parallel transformations emerging from an analysis of my interview with them. The similarities are striking, and the differences suggest questions about how teachers at various stages in their careers respond to a Funds of Knowledge teacher research experience.

Discovering and Challenging Old Assumptions

When asked about their most significant meaning from the project, Liz and Shelia agreed that the interviews with these students and their families forced them to question assumptions that determine their attitudes toward the kids and assumptions that shape their basic instructional decisions. Liz was the first to mention these assumptions: 

My going into somebody’s home and talking to them showed me that I was just wrong. My assumptions were wrong, and I hear teachers talking all the time in the halls and in the teachers’ lounge. They don’t care for their kids. They don’t do this. They are like this, and they have no idea what they are talking about because they have not been to one single student’s home or talk to one single parent about what their aspirations are, ideas they have for their children. It’s a shame, you know, for so many teachers to assume that these parents don’t love their children and what and that they want less for them, which is not the case at all.

Although Shelia has worked for years with struggling students from all ethnic groups and for the last five years with ESL students, this research also forced her to confront her assumptions about her students’ capabilities:

Why did it take me so long to get where I am now? I have worked with students for a number of years, but I think it was because we were so caught up with being within the law, providing courses for our students to take, getting enough credits, passing the state-mandated test… but I was perceiving it also that language was going to interfere with their achievement. I really feel like that now that I was saying that too, but now I’m saying, oh no, but I really think I must have been caught up in that as well. Plus, it made me become very political.

Shelia goes on to cite an example on a recent policy decision that discriminates against ESL students:

I think about how the state has now said that ESL students have to pass both reading and writing TAAS in order to exit ESL. Where are our English-speaking kids who are restricted to remedial classes by the state before they pass reading and writing TAAS? They aren’t! So why is this stipulation placed on our second-language students? It really does prevent them from taking courses they need in order to get out of school.

Liz talked about her visits in this home changed her perception of the students as real people who have unique and rich lives outside of school:

Meeting a student and their family in their home as opposed to at school puts a whole different spin on how you perceive your students – you know, as other human beings, as opposed to that herd that comes shuffling through your door every 85 minutes. The student I visited doesn’t have nearly as good a living arrangement as I do, and things still get to me, so things are going to get to my students… They are just little people.

Both Liz and Shelia repeatedly mentioned their concern that many of their colleagues are teaching according to assumptions that ignore the rich experiences that these students bring. One particular example is in the fact that teachers generally view the trips to Mexico merely as an interference with school time rather than international travel that enriches the lives of these young adults.

Another example is when Shelia’s student reported that in her cooking class, the teacher told students to cook rice as a girl, and her partner began cooking it as they did at home, frying the rice before adding water. The teacher corrected the girls and made them begin again. “That’s not the way to do it,” she said. Shelia also mentioned the difference in the treatment of foreign exchange students in spite of their limited English proficiency and the treatment of these students who have recently arrived from Mexico and Central America. It is immediately assumed that the Latino students need remediation in order to be successful. Throughout the debriefing sessions, the interviews, and their final reports, both Liz and Shelia repeatedly cited examples of the assumptions that had given up as they had learned more about their students, their families, and their Funds of Knowledge.

Making Instructional Changes

The instructional changes that these two teachers reported seemed to fall into three closely related categories: the shifts in perception discussed above, increased recognition and use of students’ background knowledge, and the recognition that students need to see relevance in school tasks and to engage in inquiry. The following comments address complex combinations of all three of these shifts.

 Liz reports that her participation in this project has changed her teaching in subtle ways, for example, in the way she tweaks writing assignments to be more responsive to students’ potential funds of knowledge:

I guess being aware of my students’ Funds of Knowledge, being different from my own alters my thinking somewhat … I approach things in an accessible way. By doing this Funds of Knowledge research, now I know what at least one of my students knows. Now that I specifically have some ideas about where students may be coming from, I actually have a place to start building. Now I have a real idea of what one of my students is coming to school with, and as I continue this and visit more students’ homes, I will build a better and better fuller picture of what my students come to school with so I can exploit that in the classroom and make an environment and assignments that will foster their learning.

Shelia talks about the specific information she wants to know about her students early in the year:

I want to get to know. I need to get to know my kids right up front. I want to know more about their home situations even before I have a chance to get out there. I want to know if they are working. I want to know who’s in the home and if the parents are working and when they are working. And are they very active in a church?

Her concern with the church membership is directly related to what she found as she visited her students’ home that they had become part of a church and spent four nights a week, two hours on Saturday and at least four hours on Sunday at church meetings.

My attitude before was that they are spending so much time at that church they are not getting their homework done. I don’t look at it that way anymore. That is their social life as well as their spiritual life and it is an important way for them to adapt to this whole new way of life.

Shelia seems not only to have integrated information she was learning about her students, but she made specific changes in the processes she used within her teaching. In talking about a culture studies unit she had used in previous years, she indicated that she had originally planned to have the students choose a country or an ethnic group and do a research project about it. Her plans included trips to the library and Internet searches. As she visited her family and analyzed her notes, she decided to reframe the unit so that students would be able to become ethnographers within their own communities:

 Because of my learning about this family’s culture, I changed the approach we used, inviting them to be like cultural anthropologists, so to speak. It was not an easy project, but the results were good. I was really excited with their write-ups of their observations and their interviews, and then I asked them to evaluate their projects. What did they really learn from it? Not just information, but as people, and their comments were really what I’d hoped for. They realized that many of us came here for the same reasons. They felt it was worthwhile. It was a valuable experience.

This shift in Shelia’s teaching of this unit was prompted not only by her own use of anthropological research methodologies but also by the information about diversity within the Mexican culture that she was learning from the family she visited:

I just changed the way I approach that particular project after I visited the family a couple of times and heard from them about the difference in the states in Mexico, the differences in dialect and certain traditions, and the way they prepare food and all that kind of thing, and I just wonder if our own kids know about that.

As Shelia’s students worked individually and in groups, many of them chose to study particular states in Mexico. One chose the low rider subculture, another chose the Tejano culture. Shelia required each student to integrate information from interviews, observations of celebrations, work sites, etc., and secondary sources in a report for the class. She reports that one of the most important discoveries the classmate made was that there are clear differences even between groups from various Mexican states.

This shift in her instruction does not build solely on specific information Shelia gleaned from this project, but it also reflects her changing attitudes and her realizations about the power of personal inquiry. In a very real sense, she invited her students to join her as ethnographers in the study of funds of knowledge.

As we thought about the original funds of knowledge research, we remembered that we had expected the home visits to yield particular content to add to the curriculum. Liz and Shelia found the experience much more complex than that. They agreed that at first they were puzzled about how to use the “facts” they were learning.

Shelia: I struggled with that a lot. I thought, now what am I learning out here that I can put in my curriculum?

Liz: Yes, that’s exactly it; I didn’t find specific things.

Liz seemed to be discovering as much about herself as a teacher and learner as she was learning about her students or the family she visited when I commented that they seemed to be saying that their teaching processes changed more than the content or at least that the processes changed first and the content changes followed. Liz interrupted with a laugh and said, “ I certainly changed first.” As Liz talked about making her writing assignments more relevant to her kids’ knowledge, she related it to her discovery about herself as a writer:

I know that I do my best writing when something is important to me or when I feel like writing about it or when I want to write about it, and that wasn’t necessarily obvious to me before, but you know as a writer that’s how I am and that’s how students are, too.

Although these changes were sometimes gradual and always complex, it seems clear that participating in this Funds of Knowledge Project triggered some important changes in these teachers’ thinking and in their teaching positions.

Stepping Into New Professional Roles

Although Liz and Shelia have very different experiences as teachers, they both expanded their professional roles during the course of this project. As a second-year teacher still on emergency certification, Liz was accepting a significant challenge joining this project. She had no experience as a researcher and only one year of experience as a teacher. As she gained confidence in what she was learning, however, she agreed to make a presentation about this project for her faculty colleagues. She reports that unlike most faculty meetings, many of her colleagues actually listened to her presentation and asked pertinent questions. She invited them to join her in a similar project next year, and four teachers have indicated that they will do that. She is currently developing a grant proposal to get some support for that project. Liz is stepping into leadership roles on her campus, and that shows unusual professional growth for a third-year teacher.

As an experienced teacher researcher, Shelia reports that this project has prompted her to become more political – to become a more vocal advocate for her ESL students:

I noticed one of the things I kept going back to, and that’s why I’m wondering if I’m being too political. You really need to be an advocate for your students. I realized that after getting to know this family and the resourcefulness of each member of the family with a very limited education, all the parents had done over the years to earn a living, you know, with only a second and third grade education, and what they have sacrificed for their children to learn English in this country; whether they stay in the United States or go back to Mexico, their kids are going to have a much better life as a result of this, and that’s what they want for their children, which is no different from what we want for our children.

And in the public schools, well, in my school, I think I have become acutely aware of how we need to really work on behalf of our ESL students. I think the language aspect is looked at as a barrier, so they are being kept from courses and opportunities because of language as though they can’t learn as well as students who speak English. It is a misconception, and I think it is something that we really have to focus on to change teachers’ attitudes about being able to learn a second language. It is an asset and not a deficit.

Shelia’s advocacy began as she focused on the immediate needs of the students in the family she visited. Shelia chose a family with two children in her classes – Christina,16, a successful student, and Carlos, 18, who had already graduated in Mexico and was coming to school in the US only to learn English. When Shelia found that Carlos had worked in the family photography business in Matamoros, she went to the journalism teacher to see if they could get him into a more challenging elective course than he was currently taking. Christina, in a private conversation, complained that the sheltered ESL classes weren’t helping her learn English because students spoke too much Spanish to one another. As a result, Shelia approached her departmental colleagues with a proposal, and they changed the criteria for students who were ready to exit the sheltered classes and enter the mainstream classes.

As Shelia began thinking about the institutional constraints on the ESL students, she began addressing some other issues. She was successful in assuring for the first time that ESL students would be screened for the gifted and talented program. She approached the principal about the need for multicultural awareness among teachers throughout the campus, and next fall there will be a new committee formed to address that need. The changing demographics of that campus suggest that there will be larger and larger numbers of Hispanic students coming into that attendance area, so this committee will attempt to take a proactive stance to prepare teachers to meet the needs of these students. Shelia has also persuaded an ESL teacher partner to work with her next fall to visit all the families of ESL students in multiple ways. Shelia has certainly lived out her new commitment to be an advocate for her students.

Gaining Insights Into This Research Process

Finally, in their interviews, Liz and Shelia discussed some insights about the research process in this particular project, but specifically, they were concerned with the stance of a teacher researcher during home visits:

Shelia: Our purpose for the research is different. They are the experts teaching us, and we are their guests. We are the students.

Liz: It’s a big attitude shift.

Leslie: For research or as a teacher or both?

Liz: Both, I guess. One and the same. Because you are not going into someone’s home with the authority of the teacher but as a learner, and there’s a certain amount of humility that goes into learning from someone in their home and being respectful and polite and thinking in those terms that you want to take something away, something potentially very important to your job.

The merging personal relationships with the family members were critical for both Liz and Shelia. Their role as researchers was clearly secondary to their growing personal relationships with their parents. They were both concerned that taking field notes was intrusive and made the family members, especially the parents, a bit self-conscious. For that reason, the tape recorder was a necessary tool. Shelia even found that it was helpful to ask the mother to show her how to cook her favorite family food so that the cooking lesson became the context for conversations. Both teachers were concerned about respecting the privacy of each family. In fact, the mutual respect and acquaintanceship coming from these home visits clearly led Liz and Shelia to see these and other students differently at school, as discussed above. These relationships let Liz and Shelia to different kinds of teaching decisions and professional involvement. Shelia explained her relationship with the family in this way:

My hostess was very open. Talking was not a problem. I think they really did enjoy having me to come visit. It could have been for the same reason that I was interested in knowing about the culture, but the other side of it too because we did a lot of cooking. The mother showed me how to make certain things, and then they wanted to know how to make pizza. So I took the ingredients to make pizza, and the last thing we are going to do is to make lasagna.

So I think in a sense it is an exchange. I feel like that’s a part of it too that they are learning from me as well.

Liz and Shelia also came to recognize how a Funds of Knowledge project is never really finished:

That’s another thing I was thinking about. As a population of a school changes, these funds of knowledge are to change, regardless of what the population is changing to. the study I do this year may have not have anything to do with my school ten years from now because of the time and what happens over time… and this is automatically kind of an ongoing project because it’s not static; as the population changes so will the Funds of Knowledge.

Further, Liz goes on to connect her growing feeling of empowerment as a teacher with that process of ongoing inquiry and change in response to student needs:

And I guess the awareness that this is not the sort of thing you can just do once makes it a different kind of thing. Just knowing that puts you in the driver’s seat in terms of where you go and what you do with your class.

Conclusion

Just as Liz and Shelia had to change some of their old assumptions and their professional actions in light of what they learned about their students’ funds of knowledge, I am having to change some of my old ideas. My decision to have my teacher education students merely read and talk about cultural diversity and social action is based on wrong assumptions. Through this Funds of Knowledge project, I have become more convinced that the deep learning is in the action and that powerful professional growth can happen in our ongoing inquiries into who our students really are within the living realities of their families and their communities. According to Paulo Freire, we quote, “become jointly responsible for a process in which we all grow.”

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References

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Seabury Press.

González, N., Moll, L. D., Floyd-Tenery, M., Rivera A., Rendón, P., Gonzales, R., & Amanti, C. (1993). Teacher research on funds of knowledge: Learning from households. National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning.

Moll, L. D., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31, 132–141.

Sleeter, C. E. (1991). Empowerment through multicultural education. State University of New York Press.

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pp. 13–21

Final Remarks

I have read and heard about how important it is to get to know the home cultures of our students. I have professed repeatedly but had never really done it. I was waiting for the parents to come to me and to get involved by coming to school or calling. In other words, I was talking the talk but not walking the talk. My involvement with the Garcia family has had a profound effect on me.

First, it has made me more proactive, meaning more of a voice for our ESL students. For example, I questioned why there were no ESL students in gifted and talented classes. I called the district coordinator to find out how we get ESL students tested for GT. She was thrilled that I called and told me how to get the process started. We tested 39 students. Of those 39, 16 will be evaluated for possible GT placement.

Carolina called my attention to problems with sheltered content classes during a visit. She informed me I don’t like it because everyone is speaking Spanish trying to help one another speaking Spanish in an English class. It was better when we were in regular classes. There are Hispanic people, and the teacher would speak English to you who would have to speak English to the American students, like in my geometry class. It is better we get along better. Some students in the sheltered classes speak English very well. We started the sheltered content instruction program this past school year to service a transitional bridge for our ESL students entering mainstream classes. I shared Carolina’s objections with my colleagues. As a result, we re-evaluated our placement policy and now limit those classes to Level II students and specific exceptions. All of our students do not come to us with the level of proficiency Carolina had. However, the problem is that some teachers view limited English proficiency as a barrier to advancement too often. I have been told, “He/she doesn’t know enough English to make it in my class.” I have noticed that when teachers have foreign exchange students with limited English proficiency in their classes, they work with them. Sometimes our ESL students’ limited English proficiency is treated as though they are unable to learn. In my attempt to understand Mrs. Garcia during our visits, I left their home mentally exhausted. How difficult it must be for our students to attend eight classes in which eight different teachers presented their materials using different accents, mannerisms, and styles.

Another way this project has impacted me is to examine how to infuse multicultural education in our school. I met with my principal to discuss what each of us meant by the term “multicultural education.” His emphasis was on curricular additions; my emphasis was the need to infuse multicultural education into every aspect of this campus to change attitudes. I talked to him about the formation of a multicultural education committee that included representation from each sector of our campus. Our committee, numbering approximately 25 faculty and students, has had two meetings with a kickoff event planned for the new school year to bring the different cultures in our school together in a fun sporting event.

I have learned that we need to actively pay for our students; they want to be successful by getting to know Cristobal as I have. I learned of his many talents, such as photography, and have suggested electives where his talent would be welcomed. I have always known this, but why did it take me so long to act? As I evaluate the past years of our ESL program, I realize that our focus has always been staying within the law, scheduling students in the right classes so they can complete their requirements, trying to get them through state-mandated tests, and building and revising curriculum. I too have been caught up in their achievement as a struggle because of language, like “that’s the way it is!”

I am beginning to ask myself, “Are some of the stipulations required by the state restrictions?’ For example, ESL students have to remain in ESL classes until they pass the reading/writing portions of the TAAS. We do not require English-speaking students to remain in remedial reading/ writing classes until they are successful. I look at sheltered instruction differently in that it is a kind of tracking. Should we be isolating our ESL students from the mainstream? We created these classes because of so many ESL students failing and mainstream classes not solely because of limited English proficiency but because of insensitive teachers. Sheltered instruction training is nothing more than good teaching using a variety of instructional techniques and activities to help students with conceptual understanding. Our district coordinator offered three different opportunities for teachers on our campus to get the training, of which approximately 25 out of 230 took advantage of it.

I don’t know if our school personnel as well as our townspeople are cognizant of the changing faces in our school. Teachers of the gifted and honors students see almost exclusively white students. The level classes being the majority of the type on our campus are mixed, but because of the majority of white students, the cultural minorities are few in each class. Too, the ESL students, almost all of whom are from Mexico and Central America, are isolated from the mainstream with ESL and sheltered instruction classes. It is necessary to prepare personnel for the change in order to deal with it equitably.

As to students’ awareness, again I don’t think the majority of white students are aware of the changing population over the years. I have heard students comment about our school being separated by color. For example, in the cafeteria in the morning, the students are color-grouped. Granted, they are sitting with friends, but friends don’t seem to cross cultural boundaries. Our students need to be educated; our campus needs the infusion of multicultural education.

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pp. 22–24

Why did you choose that student (for FOK project)?

The most important reason for choosing Tesora was that I was interested in what makes a student successful at my school, and she is a very strong student. Tesora is a seventh grader. She is the third of six children, all born in the United States. Her parents are permanent residents and have lived in the US for about 18 years. Her mother works for a custodial service, and her father works in construction in agricultural jobs in Houston and Mexico, respectively. The family of eight lives in a one-bedroom duplex in an inner-city neighborhood. The parents speak Spanish only, and the children are all bilingual.

What did you learn from Tesora’s family?

I learned more than I expected, and I expected a lot. I learned the value of talking to parents and learning from them before the project. The contact I had with parents was usually to discuss a child’s discipline problem. You can see how that would give a person a warped view of parents when you only talk to the upset, defensive, and frequently angry ones. Now I have experienced the value of making positive contact with my students’ parents. I intend to make more contacts with parents that are constructive in the future.

As a group, the teachers found that education is highly valued. Tesora’s parents and the parents interviewed by others recognized education as key for succeeding in society.

In terms of their FOK, I found that my students had a great deal of experience that could easily have an application in an academic environment. For example, Tesora’s FOK included national and international travel, rural and urban living, and agriculture among others.

 What effect did that have on you and your students in the classroom?

I’m really glad I got personally involved with Tesora’s family. Seeing my students in a personal context outside of the classroom and learning about her family strongly influenced my experience. Intellectually knowing that the hordes of students that daily herd in and out of my classroom have families and lives is very different from experiencing a little bit of the family life and home of one student. The visits reminded me that my students really are human beings with personal circumstances that affect them in school.

With Tesora, the big effect on her was that it built up her confidence in her own abilities. She blossomed academically this year. She gets most of the credit for that. She also tested the limits of her new and unfamiliar relationship with her teacher, like untucking her shirttail, which breaks the school dress code. But I enforced such school rules for everyone evenly, so this didn’t become a problem for us.

Can you give a specific example of how you applied your awareness of FOK in your classroom?

The best example of using FOK was my students’ participation this year in the national writing contest called, Do the Write Thing, that offers students a forum to creatively address the problems of violence and alcohol, drug abuse in their neighborhoods. Since all of my students have experienced urban life and the requisite problems, the contest draws on folk. I broadened the scope of violence as described in the contest to include media and domestic violence. Every student showed interest and participated, and because they wrote, they had something to revise and proofread. They produced some very good 7th grade writing. Since the writing is an integral part of the 7th grade language arts curriculum, I believe it is necessary to give writing opportunities that will engage every student like this one did.

Are the FOK applicable in subject areas other than language arts?

Once they are known, all it takes for any teacher to use FOK in her classroom is a little creativity. Sometimes it only requires recognizing that an activity does draw on students’ FOK and exploiting that aspect like I did with the writing contest. A science teacher might use students’ experience with agriculture to teach growth cycles or the chemistry of pesticides. A social studies teacher could easily use students’ experience with national and international travel. A math teacher could use the time and distance aspects of travel for calculations. The greatest value of applying FOK is connecting familiar information with new information.

Do you think other teachers would benefit from discovering the FOK of their own students?

Absolutely. The project showed me that my students’ cultural knowledge serves as a resource that is at my disposal in the classroom. Cultural differences between teacher and student are not obstacles to be overcome but rather tools to be understood and used. Learning some of my students’ FOK enriched my teaching. As I continue to learn, I expect improved teaching practices will promote my students’ success.

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pp. 29–33

My grandmother, Eugenia Acosta Gonzales, was very influential through her cuentos and the love for reading. Her cuentos would always start with the words “en aquellos tiempos” (could be translated as “back in the day” or “once upon a time”). She was constantly telling her stories of her childhood and her beloved Papá Mon. She was quick in remembering people’s names and family members. It would always seem that Papa, my grandfather, could never remember all the details, so she would end up telling us the story. I enjoyed listening to all the stories from en los aquellos tiempos, even if I had heard the story over and over. Even though Eugenia passed away almost two years ago, the stories continue to be passed on to others.

Education is a very important aspect to me personally, just as it was for her. One of the traits that I continue in my classroom is the storytelling of my own personal life to students. These two are intertwined in my daily teaching with my students. It is like if I develop a special bond with them, just like a parent would with their own child.

I’m going to share one of her many stories that she would tell us. This story illustrates part of my funds of knowledge that I have continued in my own teaching career. During the early 1910s, the family moved to West Texas. They lived in a one-room house that had gaps in the floor. She would tell us that the mice that lived underneath the house became her friends. The mice would stand up on their hind legs to accept the food and water that she would give them.

Eugenia’s desire was to learn how to read and write. She would sit down each evening with a lantern and practice reading and writing. She actually learned how to read by reading 1001 Arabian Nights. She would read a different story every day because it was a different story with a moral ending. She would sit by the lantern practicing her penmanship by using an old Sears catalog as a model. Eugenia’s desire was to be a teacher, so she would sit her brothers and sisters around in a circle as she would conduct class. She taught them math, reading, and writing.

Eugenia never forgot where she came from because the rest of her life was devoted to education. She learned how to read and write English so she would serve as an interpreter for many people. She taught many people how to read and write in Spanish.

My grandmother had a great influence on my father, Abelardo Gonzalez, on the importance of reading. He was always reading the Odessa American, which is the daily newspaper from Odessa, TX. We were never allowed to touch the newspaper until he finished. When my father was not working or watching television, he would be reading. Even today, he continues to read different types of literature. I remember that our house had books for us to read all the time. My mother would take Sylvia, my sister, and me to the public library to check out books during the summer. I would even read the encyclopedia when I would not have anything to read.

Religion is very important in my family. We would always go to the 8:00 mass at Saint Agnes Catholic Church. As a child, I always wanted to be a priest. Jimmy Primera and I had the opportunity to attend a Vocations Workshop in Liberty, Missouri, at the end of my 7th grade year.

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A Full Circle of Understanding: Immersion Into Your Student’s Environment, Departure From Your Own

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pp. 34–36

My Funds of Knowledge Family

Delores (not her real name) is the second of three children. Delores’s mother, aged 28, stays home with the children while her father, aged 32, works as a welder. Delores’s mother completed the 9th grade in Mexico, and her father the 5th. The only daughter, Delores has an older brother in the 5th grade and a younger brother in morning pre-kindergarten. The family immigrated from rural Mexico during the summer of 1996. They followed other relatives who live in Houston and Dallas. They currently reside near the school in a three-room house adjacent to a small apartment complex which houses recent immigrant families. Their house, built in the mid-40s, has a stove, oven, sink, and bathroom but no heat or air conditioning. Boards and silver electrical tape cover the home’s broken windows; despite repairs, the wind and cold sneak into the house.

Visiting Dolores and her family provided me with a new basis of information upon which to build a rapport with my students and improve my instructional strategies. After visiting, I realized my attributions regarding financial status were wrong, although classroom observation revealed Dolores to be bright and well-adjusted, leading me to believe she lived in a comfortable economic status. Dolores’s home revealed a family struggling to make ends meet. After visiting, I began to look for the signs of poverty I previously missed, such as wearing poorly sized uniforms, inappropriate dress for the weather, and strict reliance on the free meals program for all food. Now I think harder when asked to recommend students for free clothing vouchers or other economic-based programs at the school.

Observing dialogues and interactions between Dolores and her mother also motivated me to make an effort to speak daily to the students who might not be interacting with adults in the home. Seeing how much care, love, and attention surrounded Dolores at her home, I also realized I have an obligation as a teacher to the best of my ability to duplicate that environment in the classroom. Currently, I work much harder to express individual value to each of my students and see them as little people who are growing when they make me angry.

Final Remarks

Participation in the funds of knowledge project has helped me build a knowledge base about the students I teach and a comfort with the knowledge acquisition process prior to participating in the project. I possessed many false attributions about my students based on my personal experience. Now I recognize the need to explore, understand, and utilize the experiences of others when analyzing a situation. I recommend all teachers get to know the family of at least one student.

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Funds of Knowledge That Diminish Borders and Create New Dimensions

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pp. 37–41

My life in some ways relates to the lives of the family I visited. I came to my education and teaching rather late in life as I was for years a single parent and was preoccupied with supporting my son and myself. There were few options for me and I took what work would earn enough money. When my son went to college, I began to work with emotionally disturbed adolescents and for two years I operated a group home for seven of them. With my second marriage, I had enough to support to get my BA at the age of 54. Through community involvement in my neighborhood school, I became interested in teaching. I earned my MA ED this year and I teach bilingual kindergarten at Cornelius Elementary School. I hope and had hoped to provide the space and the learning experiences to allow my children to grow into self-governing, creative adults.

The Funds of Knowledge Project began to affect my thinking and the dynamics in my class when I started to look at the children more closely to choose the right one to visit. The first parent I approached with the request for an interview was the mother of a child who had been born in Mexico. She thought about our program and decided she could not risk the interview because she does not live within the district for the school. Although she gave the school an address that is within the district, she does not live there. The second parent I approached lives nearby but not at the address given to the school. She agreed to the interview, and I agreed not to divulge her correct address to the school. Mrs. Martínez is one of about 12 parents who escort their children to the classroom in the mornings. These parents often arrive early and visit with each other while waiting for the bell to ring, and it was from their interactions that I came to understand that my request for an in-home interview was an honor for her and added to her prestige in the group. Other mothers asked if I would be doing more than one family and said they would like to be next if more visits were planned. Graciela, the student whose home I had arranged to visit, clucked and crowed all day. Several of the children asked me to visit their homes as well.

The Visit

Graciela and her family live in a subdivision off Telephone Road to the north and west of Hobby Airport. Although there are some exceptions, most of the houses are small two-bedroom homes of about 1000 to 1500 square feet. They are owned and/ or occupied by successful blue-collar workers: foremen, supervisors, welders, and are nearly all of Hispanic descent. Nearly all of the houses are of the same design and all are set back from the curb about 20 feet. The neighborhood is clean and well-groomed, and many of the houses sport flowers and owner-generated landscaping. Graciela’s house has only one small tree in the backyard, and that does not shield the house from the hot Texas sun. The grass is dense and green and obviously cared for; there is not a bald or thinning spot, and at a single blade, cooks its head above the others. The house is a single-story wooden frame single-family dwelling with a single car-attached garage. It has two bedrooms separated by a bathroom. The front room facing the street belongs to the parents. It holds a queen-size bed, a dresser, a chest, a night table, a door to a small closet, and a small shrine to the Virgin.

The shrine is composed of a small wall shelf draped with a coarse lace on which sit two candles and some silk flowers. Above the shelf hangs a framed picture of the Virgin. the picture is not painted but rather made of an impressed plastic so that it appears to be three-dimensional. Mrs. Martinez does not turn her back to the Virgin but positions herself so that the conversation includes the icon. My impression was that the image is very real to the woman. Mrs. Martinez describes herself as a religious person who goes to church regularly and frequently prays for guidance in raising her children. She does not believe in corporal punishment and talks with her children when they have misbehaved.

Mrs. Martínez

Mrs. Martinez’s life is restricted by what appear to be the demands of her husband and her culture. Her husband does not want her to work, and her culture dictates what she does with the hours of her days.

On a typical day, Mrs. Martinez rises at 6:00 AM makes lunches for her family, cooks breakfast, awakens her husband, and gets him off to work. She then awakens the girls, does their hair, gets them ready for school, and walks them to their classroom. She returns to her home, where she performs some other household chores, and returns to school at 9:30 with Graciela’s lunch. She completes her housework and begins preparation for the evening meal. She picks up her children from school, oversees their homework, and when it is done, she accompanies them to the neighborhood park for a short time. On her return, she finishes preparing the evening meal, has dinner with her family, and cleans up afterward. She gets the children ready for bed, and for a short time, if allowed, they watch TV for an hour before the children turn in. After they are in bed, she watches the serial stories on her Spanish TV. There are certain other family matters for which she is also responsible.

Mr. Martinez’s brother had eaten some bad shellfish and was in serious condition in the hospital. It fell on Mrs. Martinez to sit with him all day every day until he left the hospital. I had known for an intellectual standpoint what some of the effects of oppression are, but I never saw them so clearly, particularly in people I know so well. To me, her life seems like an endless stream of house cleaning and meal making. Her only goals are involved with the lives of her children. They are both bright, and she wants them to go to college, perhaps for a business degree and perhaps to learn computers. She never asked them what they thought they would like. They do, Graciela, from my observations. Graciela is destined to live a life with nearly as few options as had her mother, Mrs. Martinez. Her whole family— mother, father, sisters, and brothers— have come from Mexico and live in the greater Houston area. Mrs. Martinez talks to her mother every day on the phone and considers her mother to be her best friend. They talk about the family things, and Mrs. Martinez frequently asked her mother for advice, particularly about child-rearing matters, as she considers her mother to be a good mother and wise in the ways of children. Sandra and Graciela feel the same way about their mother. They both said during my interview that they want to be like her.

Although Graciela will be one of the first in my class to become a reader because of the family’s tradition of not reading, I seriously doubt that she will ever read for recreation. I saw no magazines or newspapers except for the TV Guide when I asked if the girls had books. I was assured that they had many and was shown a group of about five little golden Disney-type books that sat on a rack in the dining area. There were no newspapers, novels, magazines, and no real books to be seen. There were no books on the night tables; school books were kept in the girls’ book bags when homework was done. The living room features the television, the sofa, and two soft chairs facing it, and there is no lighting for reading. The coffee table that sits in front of the couch and one of the chairs is clean except for the TV Guide. Unless Graciela becomes an avid reader and loves books to widen her horizons or unless some dramatic event intervenes, she could run the risk of growing into her mother’s life as a non-reader despite her reading proficiency.

Mr. Martínez

Although Mr. Martínez is absent from the home much of the time, the life of the family still centers around him. It was clear to me that when he is home, all attention is focused on him. My visiting at such a time seemed to be out of the question. I asked if there might be a time when I could come to visit when the whole family might be together and was told that no, he works late every day, six days a week, with non- optional over time, every day. On Sundays, he played softball with his friends and is gone until it is too dark to play. He came to the open school, but that was nearly early in September, and I was unable to spend any time with him later. I met him with the family in the supermarket, but I have not had any lengthy discussion with him. It is he, however, that dictates when and for how long the children may watch the television. Meals are geared to the times when he will be home, and his caps hang on the living room wall near the door. No other person’s possessions were found in any of the rooms, save Sandra’s medal, which hangs in her room. He signs the report cards and permission slips for absences and field trips. Mrs. Martinez has told me on other occasions that she must get her husband’s approval before she could agree to accompany the class on its outings.

Mrs. Martinez offered me food and a large bottle of juice and I started to decline it when I noticed that her face was both anxious and disturbed I surmised that I would be trespassing the norms and perhaps insulting her by declining to eat and drink in her home I explained that I needed to return home as I had been there much longer than either of us had anticipated and I added untruthfully that my husband would be waiting for me I sensed and I believe I was right when that the waiting husband superseded all other polite conventions we talked for a few more minutes and she apologized for the smallness of her house and I admired it for its appearance and cleanliness I think she was finally satisfied.

The Impact Of My Visit On My Thinking And My Teaching

The interview left a lasting impression on me. I left the house amid promises that she would show me how to make the malachite. It was a very pleasant visit. She and her family are very amiable people, and I was definitely the entertainment of the day.

The visit has had a profound effect on my teaching. Although I am a new teacher, and because what I do in the classroom changes daily or at least weekly, I am probably not able to see all the effects, but certainly a few of the ramifications are clear to me.

The first was that all of the children in their lives stood out for me as if in a new dimension. I could see them more clearly and love them much more dearly. Through this and other home visits, I came to understand that although all the parents of my children speak Spanish, they represent a multicultural group. One family is Honduran, and their culture is very different from that of the Mexicans. Another couple is interracial, Mexican and Vietnamese, and they too see things differently than the majority and have very different expectations from the classroom.

Parent Goals

The children and the minutiae of their lives assume great importance to these families and these mothers because the children and their husbands are the sole purpose of their lives. The women come to take seriously the arguments and disputes of their children. If one child fights with another, the mothers will argue it out in front of my door the next morning and often chastising a child whose parents are not there to stand up for him or her. Few of the women have come to me highly agitated that their child was not seated properly, that is, they were given a chair lower than someone else’s or they had been placed at a table with children who play too roughly or who are considered to be of a lower academic ability. I saw firsthand the effects of oppression, not as an intellectual exercise but how it is played out in the lives of the oppressed.

The second major effect was that I felt I needed to give the children, particularly the girls, an opportunity to stretch their visions a little. We had some talk about making choices. These were difficult conversations because while the boys chose to be the same things that all boys choose— a fireman, a policeman, an astronaut— or whatever Daddy does— the little girls were mostly silent or responded with wanting to be a mother. Once said she wanted to be a teacher. I have some hope that while what do I want to do when I grow up was clearly an empty set at the outset of the conversation, there is at least a schema now to be filled. Unfortunately, in this my first year, I was swamped with ideas and plans, and I did not have enough time to sort and implement them. It is mostly in retrospect that I feel the need to start the conversation earlier next year and repeated often throughout the year.

The third difference was that I realized that 15 minutes of reading was not nearly enough for children who come from homes where reading is not the normal evening activity. I started reading through their nap time, and again at the end of the day. They particularly like being read to at nap time because it is a difficult time for those who cannot sleep. Many of the children began to form mental images of the story being read. The progress was remarkable. At the start of the year, they had tolerance for nothing but picture books. Gradually, I read longer in longer books until they were able to listen to books with few illustrations. Some of this is simply developmental, I am sure, but there was a leap in their comprehension of stories and their ability to stay focused in the absence of pictures.

My struggle this year in the area of literacy was the lack of good children’s books in Spanish. I had a few excellent books for the learning of the decoding, but I wanted to do what I wanted to do, which was to create the magic of reading, the enchantment of engagement in the story. There were precious few books for this. For the coming year, I will look for biographies which can be empowering as well as entertaining.

I think that most importantly for me, this home visit broke the ice, and I visited several of the children’s homes. The parents ceased to be adversarial, and many became my allies, and a few became friends. I never did another formal interview, but I went to socialize to celebrate a birthday, to see a new baby, to bring books to a child with chicken pox, etc. My slight command of Spanish became a matter of humor and a cause for them to help. Cristian’s mother came to my classroom every afternoon to talk with two children to help them in their language development. I stopped by Diane’s house to give her mother a card Diane had made for her and had accidentally left at school. I was able to use the occasion to talk about Diane’s progress in school and what I thought needed to happen for her. The woman began coming into the classroom early to help clean up.

The same day I dropped off Gabriel’s Mother’s Day card, his mother, who had been my chief critic, responded warmly. She did not invite me into the house, but my visit was unexpected, and we did chat for a few minutes most amiably in her driveway. I left knowing that I had converted an antagonist.

By far the most productive visit was with Jessica’s mother in the beginning of the year. She told me not to hesitate to punish her, that she was a disobedient, stubborn child, and indeed she was. She came into class punching, kicking, and quick to take offense. I had occasion to drive Jessica home several afternoons, and in these visits, I would brag about Jessica’s helpfulness, her quick mind, and how well she was doing in school. I cannot take credit for all of Jessica’s turnaround, but I am sure these casual visits helped Mrs. Diaz to see her daughter in a new light, which in turn gave Jessica the space to develop her innately sweet nature.

Next year I will visit early and often. I may have an early-in-the-year party in my home to get to know and be known more quickly.

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Professional Reflections: Funds of Knowledge Research

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pp. 42–48

Finding ways to involve parents of ESL and bilingual students in the school atmosphere and using knowledge from the home to change curriculum for the better were main goals of this research team. Due to the great guidance provided by the supervising professors of this project, the communication lines were always open between the researchers and the professors. This kind of cooperative effort has greatly affected my interest in keeping this type of visitation going with my students and their parents. Many concerns and questions that arose during this project were valued by the professors and discussed in an atmosphere of community and caring. This group of educators helped to support my opinion that most teachers are trying to create an environment in their classrooms that will allow all students to make the best of their education. Obstacles to student achievement often seem insurmountable, such as second language learning, parent apathy, and basic survival needs. Another major obstacle is the assumption that there is a lack of interest in education in the homes of their students. My experience has taught me that this is by no means accurate. Since every one of these is affected by the home environment, this research has proven to me that the need for knowledge of the home environment will be beneficial to me. By giving support and direction to home visits that were positive experiences for the parents and myself, this cooperative effort has helped me to create a better curriculum that fits the needs of each of my students.

My Reasons for Doing This Research

I was very interested in learning more about my students lives and literacy when this research opportunity was presented to me. Going into the homes of my students gave me greater insight into the life experiences that limit language development and also those that point out the need for getting a good education. Learning about Viet and his family has made me even more aware that the lack of literacy in a home initially is not indicative of a lack of desire for a good education. This close family has proven to me that anything may be possible experiences and culture will affect adult immigrants determination to learn. This family is determined to make sure that the children of the family have every opportunity to choose a career that they want and pursue it.

Being able to pass a certification test to teach children for whom English is the second language was not enough for me. I felt that in order to do my best teaching, I would have to know more about the culture and the family structure of these families. English is my native language. Consequently, if a teacher asked my parents to help me with my homework, they were able to work through it with me even if they didn’t understand it immediately. Viet would come to class with his homework. However, it was either incomplete or completed incorrectly after going to his home and observing the isolated conditions there. I was able to believe my other students who would tell me some curious excuses for not doing their homework or not being able to get help with it. My own circumstances did not allow me to automatically be aware of how limited my ESL students’ environments actually were.

The realization came to me quite quickly that I would need much more experience in approaching parents and families of second language learners in a non-threatening and non-critical manner. This would help me to accomplish my task of connecting these parents to school activities and their children’s education. It is not easy to approach parents about problems with any child. Many teachers just accept it as one of the few times when they have to deal with the parents. My visits created such an enthusiasm in Viet that I wanted to go more often than I did. His progress in reading and language was well above my other newer immigrants. Perhaps my grades would always have been those A’s my father wanted if my teachers had made visits to my home.

My parents were never involved in school activities because they were too busy to be bothered. Students of all categories today have a much greater need for their parents to be involved at school or to at least feel that they can ask questions and get answers.

The Community and the School

The area in which these students live is predominantly Hispanic and Vietnamese. The school population is about 80% Hispanic and 15% Vietnamese. The Vietnamese population is so large in the area that there are apartment complexes that have only Vietnamese residents, as have the Hispanic and Black populations. They have developed their own little communities within the community. There are a few grocery stores and other small businesses that are attuned to the needs of this community of immigrants. Mostly, these small shops and businesses are run by Vietnamese people. The residents can then get foods and other items that are common to the culture of Vietnam. My students love to bring snack foods from these stores and explain what the labels mean. This is an opening for a great literacy crossover experience in my class since they rarely have to go outside the community for necessities. They do not have many opportunities to engage in English conversations. They simply won’t have to use any English to get needs met if they continue their isolation.

The Family and Home Environment

Viet lives with both parents and three siblings, one boy and two girls. They moved to America in February 1996 from Binh Hoa, Vietnam. The parents were farmers in Vietnam. Farming in Vietnam requires little literacy. The rest of their family still lives on farms in Vietnam. Viet’s parents went to school in Vietnam for five years as young children. They then had to quit to help with the farming on the family land. After the father was released from a Viet Cong prison in 1992, they began making preparations to come to the United States. Immigrating to this country is not as quick and easy as some Americans may think. These people made many sacrifices to come to this country. Both parents admitted that they were terrified of moving to America. They knew that they would have to work hard to give their children a chance to succeed.

Our first visit was very stilted and informal. We were escorted to a rectangular folding table next to the kitchen. The couch and loveseat in the living room would have been less formal, but that was not to be. All conversations were held over the entire six months at that folding metal table. The tile floors were always clean and glossy. Furniture was sparse. The living area contained only one card table, the couch, and the loveseat. The only other furniture outside of the bedrooms was the rectangular metal table in the dinette area, some folding chairs, and one low round table about two feet in diameter.

Taking careful note of any literacy in the home was part of my goal. The walls were bare of artwork of a commercial kind. There were some examples of children’s work and a few awards that the older children had received in the last school year. The oldest daughter had made a wall hanging while studying Brazil in one of her middle school classes. A huge jack-o’-lantern drawing was next to a photograph reproduction of the Pope. It took quite a few occasions of looking at photographs of the apartment to realize the connection between the two pictures. There were Angel stickers plastered all around the big orange face of the jack-o’-lantern, right next to the picture of the Pope. Two wall calendars were posted next to the kitchen. These had been sent to the home from family members in Vietnam. Neither calendar had more than one or two notes over a whole month page.

A television set in the front corner of the living area on a card table. The VCR sat next to it, and videotapes were stacked beneath. On the wall, a plexiglass board about 2 ½  by 3 ½  feet had been attached with some kind of small bolt. On this board, there was a list of approximately 70 spelling words written with a wipe-off marker. At first, I thought that all of the words had been from Viet’s list. Then I realized that the other children were also in the initial learning stages. This is the most obvious example of the importance of school to this family. I never noticed any books or magazines on any of the tables. This type of material might have been stored in the closets when they cleaned the room for our arrival. When asked about books and magazines, the mother only said that the Bible was the only book besides the children’s school books.

Acceptance of My Presence

I was received very cordially by the mother immediately. She and the children were very willing to answer questions. I was disturbed that I was unable to make Nhiem (Viet’s mother) feel comfortable enough with me to ask questions of her own. Many times I asked if she had questions about Viet’s learning in the class. She had a very consistent answer: she loved what I was doing and thought I was wonderful. Don’t forget this was all told to me through translators. Finally, during one of my last visits, I asked her again if she had any questions. She opened up a little to say that she was concerned about the class Viet was put into the year before and this year she felt that he should have been with only children who were just beginning to learn the language. I was very glad to be able to ease her discomfort. I explained how much easier it would be for Viet to learn the language by listening and talking with children who already knew the language. I was surprised by the question, however, because the other children were in middle school. She had not expected them to be put in a class with much younger children. After my explanation, she seemed happier about it. This is the sort of question that must run through many of the parents’ minds. I would be curious to know if they ever get around to asking it and the many others they must have. This, of course, is another reason to try to make the connection between home and school more reciprocal.

Learning About My Student’s Environmental Language

Experience with the English language is limited in several ways and for several major reasons. They do not go into the English-speaking community very often and only then, for necessities. The residents of the apartment complex and also of much of the surrounding area are Vietnamese. They have joined a local church which has services in Vietnamese. Otherwise, they do not go to any social functions in the area. They go to the grocery store across the street and the small local markets for food that is packaged and sent from Vietnam. Viet and his siblings are not allowed to play with many children in the complex because the parents keep strict control over all activities. The father speaks a little English and was given a handheld computer translator by the Human Operations Office that arranged their immigration. The mother is learning a few words from the four children as they work on homework in the afternoons. Opportunities for this family to see the value of literacy in the business environment are few. Watching television is the most exposure that the children get to the English-speaking community outside of school. The parents and four children live in a 2-bedroom apartment. The father works for a car wash. Neighbors in the apartment complex helped him find this job. This precluded the necessity of going out and hunting for a job without language skills. The mother has a slight disability and doesn’t work. She also doesn’t get out of the house except to shop for necessities or to go to church.

Learning About Vietnamese Education

One aspect of the culture that directly affects the family’s relationship to school is the respect and almost fearful reverence of educators. Parent involvement in Vietnam has a completely different context than in most American school districts. It was evident that Nhiem wanted to please the teacher in the interviews. This opened a direct avenue to the subject of Vietnamese education. All of the children had attended Vietnamese schools before coming to America. Nhiem was quick to react animatedly when asked about the difference between the schools of the two countries. She took quite a few minutes to explain how rigid the teachers were in Vietnam. Two particular events may surprise the more conservative American teacher. The first was a description of what happens when a child is late for or absent from school. If a child is late, the door to the school is already locked. The child must return home and get their parents. All must then go to the school to explain why the child was late and apologize to the faculty for being disrespectful. The parents must then apologize for not raising their children to be respectful. This seems extreme, but it is effective. She says the children are only late when they are ill and are accompanied by their parents. The first time they tried to go to school that day, discipline in Vietnamese schools is extremely harsh by American standards and UN standards for that matter. Children are slapped immediately if the teacher considers any comment or action of the child to be disrespectful.

This could include responses to questions which are spoken in a short tone or daydreaming at any time. no excuse for bad moods or lack of sleep are taken into consideration. Again the parent is considered responsible for these issues and must come to school after it happens to apologize for the child’s behavior.

New Beliefs and Goals

Parents and students who are learning English as a second language from teachers who do not speak their native language must deal with an even greater communication barrier. I see now that a great improvement would be made if teachers could breach this communication barrier and many cultural barriers to provide parents and students with a caring, comfortable learning environment that encourages cooperation.

Through the learning I have done in this research, I have decided that teachers in today’s culturally diverse communities need to assess more than the academic knowledge of students. Ongoing assessment of family situations, backgrounds, culture, and relationships would complete the picture of the whole child. Without this knowledge, teachers and parents will continue to have difficulty with communication and with the setting of mutual goals for the children. Viet struggles, as do his parents, with sentence structure and the various spelling patterns of the language because I know of the limits for assistance in their environment. I have seen that all my students’ homework must be limited to creative exploration with the parents in science or math and basic repetitive review sheets that cover language topics which the children have studied many times. Even directions thrown to the parents and students off balance when they are worded differently than the children have heard during class. They may be able to read the words but cannot determine the meaning because of the structure of the sentence or the meanings of new words.

When other children told me their reasons for not finishing or not understanding their homework, I really did not believe that they could not get help. Now I do. The development of good language structure and comprehension will fall on the teachers of these children. As I made these visits, another thought occurred to me. As I have become familiar with many foreign students at the university, my opinion of these friends is not affected by the lack of perfect English speech patterns or the difficulty they have in finding just the right words to express themselves. Do some teachers complain about the ESL students because they still expect perfection? Some of the teachers that I work with seem to expect much more than these young children can actually do within the short time span that they have been exposed to the language. They have an easier time learning the language than their adult parents but still need time to become completely knowledgeable and comfortable with the language. Due to these realizations, my expectations and my instruction in this class change because homework, although much valued by the families, could be developing bad habits rather than good ones. Almost all instruction is now given in small groups, and cooperative learning is used in almost every situation except that of required testing to make sure that the children were using the language often and continuing appropriate learning by constant communication. Understanding the limits of the family has eased my stress in trying to push the children into a faster level of development than I would have expected of them prior to this research.

The Results

The intended goal of my visits was to find the literacy and funds of knowledge in the home of my student. What I found was a great desire to make sure that the children get a good education. I also found a tremendous family unit that depended on each other almost completely.

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Successful teacher research studies consistently demonstrate that diverse data collection methods yield insightful information that directly addresses the problems or issues that teachers consider relevant and useful. The quality of the research is determined by practitioners who seek compelling evidence that convinces them of the need to systematically investigate their own work. At the heart of collaborative teacher research lies the crucial role of inquiry and reflection, which are essential for engaging in meaningful dialogues with key others. These interactions foster a synergy of significance and innovation.

Among the prominent characteristics of the inquiry/reflection process in teacher research that have emerged in the Funds of Knowledge Teacher Research Collaborative is its recursive, spiraling nature. Inquiry and discourse leads to reflection, which then loops back to inquiry, and so on. The papers presented in this volume by teachers and researchers exhibit strategies for probing and challenging existing assumptions. Consequently, teachers have been able to adopt novel teaching paradigms.

However, if we consider inquiry/reflection as integral to teacher professional development, it is crucial to identify the essential role and manifestations of agency and voice within this process. Research collaborators widely believe that the inquiry and reflection process is incomplete without providing an outlet, vehicle, forum, or any other means that empower agency and liberate the expression of voice by teacher researchers. Therefore, it is crucial to invite other practitioners into the circle of dialogue, encouraging their active participation in the research process.

In its most effective form, action teacher research conducted among collaborators becomes the voice or voices of the participants (Cochran & Lytle, 1993). Compared to raising individual voices, the collective voices of teachers and students often create a narrative that effectively conveys the dynamic interplay between researchers and subjects. This narrative is particularly scrutinized for its interpretation of the data. Ethnographers acknowledge the significance of how collective voices are represented, as it often conveys as much meaning as the actual data itself (Walcott 1995; Van Maanen, 1995). Collaborative research aligns with empowerment models and plays a crucial role in elevating the voices of teacher researchers and their students.

In this article, I examine with a purposeful lens the Teacher Research Collaborative within the Discovering Our Experiences Project. These collaboratives served a dual purpose: professional development and research. Collaborating with public school teachers, their students, and university faculty, these projects fostered the exchange of research methodologies, resources, ideas, and perspectives. Consequently, curriculum innovation emerged, creating ongoing opportunities for dialogue, inquiry, and reflection. Furthermore, this development presented the challenge of synthesizing diverse voices, making interpretations, and creating avenues for further learning. Ultimately, it compelled us to discern an ephemeral ideology and establish a critical pedagogical foundation, integrating it into our teaching philosophy.

Collaborative research in education by its own definition requires an exchange of ideas, typically within a constructionist context, relying on the professional and personal relationships between and among subjects and researchers to deconstruct oppressive, unjust educational practices. The dynamics between the collaborator’s socially constructed knowledge at the individual as well as collective levels result in a web of rich complexities, oftentimes difficult to capture by a single authorial voice. One mode of representation that has gained recognition among teacher researchers and maintains the form, function, and integrity of ethnographic research is the narrative approach.

The Narrative Approach

The narrative, or simply the story, has long been considered a means by which humans gained insight into their lives, learned about their past, and wondered about their future. However, only recently have researchers come to rely on the structure of the narrative to organize teacher research data, create text for learning, and theorize practical knowledge (Connelly and Clandinin, 1988; Albrichter, Posch, & Somekh, 1993; Collingsworth, 1992; Miller, 1990; Schubert & Myers, 1992; Guadarrama, 1995).

Richardson (1995) examines in detail the quality of narratology, emphasizing its ability to capture the collective voices often considered essential to sociologists. From a researcher’s perspective, harnessing the collective voices of a group, particularly teachers, is crucial. Narrative texts can effectively depict the complexity and richness of data. Moreover, the collective voices of teachers can serve as powerful testimonials of both effective and ill-conceived practices and program designs.

Teachers, despite their extensive knowledge, experience, and exceptional leadership skills, are often marginalized professionals. Their status and, consequently, their voice in the professional field are diminished or silenced. However, teacher educators and researchers unanimously agree that a teacher’s practical and theoretical knowledge is undoubtedly the most valuable among professional knowledge categories.

Teachers possess a unique insider perspective that is strategically valuable for action research. They have practical, grounded knowledge and an inherent understanding of the tasks they perform and the expectations they fulfill. While it’s challenging to address the reasons behind teachers’ low esteem in this paper (Apple 1978), rather, I focus on the valuable contributions that teacher research collaboratives make in improving student education. However, it’s evident that within the existing structure of teacher professionalism, it’s virtually impossible to create the necessary conditions for teachers’ voices to emerge. This fact, among others, motivates the creation of teacher research collaboratives that embrace an alternative theoretical and professional development framework.

The Context

Throughout this paper, I’ll be referring to our ongoing collaborative research projects. These projects highlight the unique qualities of our designs and also provide critiques on their shortcomings. As is common in most university settings, faculty members have the option to participate in collaborations with teachers in schools. However, as a participatory action researcher, I chose to take on the role of a curriculum specialist in the Fable Writing Project, in addition to my faculty and researcher responsibilities. The primary objective of this plan was to develop a curricular program that teachers could consider, and I would be working closely with their students to ensure its effectiveness. I explain the theoretical foundations of the Fable Writing Project in two articles in the Volume Three of the Discovering Our Experiences Project: “Multicultural Literature in Bilingual Education: Exploring Story as Guide in La Nueva Fábula,” and “Creating the Magical World of a Mediated Curricular Model.”

We completed three fable writing projects in the first and second years of the program. These projects were conducted in one of the nation’s largest school districts, located in low-income areas of the city. The grade levels involved ranged from first to fifth grade. The students in this classroom were bilingual, with some just beginning to learn English. A brief sociological survey of the school community revealed that a significant portion of the parents belong to the working class and primarily reside in apartments. There is limited availability of single-family housing in one of the school communities, and many of the residents are immigrants who have lived in the United States for less than 12 years. Some of these individuals have acquired formal educational experiences in their home countries, although the extent of their education varies. One community had a notably large population from Central America, primarily from El Salvador and Nicaragua. Despite speaking Spanish, the children in this community come from diverse backgrounds and experiences.

The Fable Writing Project in Bilingual Education

The Fable Writing Project involved children in writing their original fables in their native language, Spanish. While some children chose to write in English, others applied their bilingual abilities by crafting fables in both languages. However, it’s important to note that most children refrained from practicing code-switching or mixing English and Spanish in their stories. The primary focus of the project was on the inherent content of the fable genre, rather than the linguistic features present in their original narratives (García, & Kleifgen, 2019).

All of the five teachers in the first and second years of the Fable Writing Project were bilingual. All were Hispanic with the exception of one who was African American. Three of the five teachers were recent student teacher graduates who had assumed classroom teaching duties upon the request of the principal, replacing the original teacher who had recently resigned.

As the author of the research project, I approached the teachers, who had been selected with the assistance of their principals or had volunteered. I had a three-week plan that included three main components: 1) reading fables to the children using read-aloud techniques, simple costumes, and props; 2) helping them understand the fable as a literary genre by using process writing techniques and encouraging them to write original fables; and 3) monitoring their writing of original fables, culminating in a rehearsed program where students read and/or acted out their fables. Two of the classrooms in the second year decided to videotape their students’ fable skits. The classroom teachers supported the project in various ways. Some teachers showed strong emotional reactions to their students’ fables.

Being mindful of the past pitfalls of research designs that exploit their subjects without offering anything in return, I undertook the task of publishing a volume of the children’s original fables, illustrated by a student teacher. The printing costs were fully covered by research funds obtained from the university. Additionally, I received grant funds to purchase a limited number of children’s books, which I distributed to the student writers who demonstrated exceptional writing proficiency and creativity. However, selecting these students proved more challenging than anticipated, as all of them were deserving of recognition. Each student received a certificate of appreciation for their original fable writing and a copy of the publication, Cuéntame una fábula, in the first year, and Cuéntame más fábulas in the second year.

Rationale for Selecting the Fable Genre: Connecting Oralcy with Literacy

Time constraints often compel research collaborators to carefully select their projects that, even when scheduled in short time frames, tend to consume more resources than intended. Thus, the projects I chose were carefully preconceived to optimize the benefits within the restrictive parameters. In this section, I elaborate on why I chose to collaborate with teachers in the Fable Writing Project. The rationale is rich in description because it represents a theoretical framework that is fundamental to my work in teacher education, and thus, assumes an important motivating force in becoming part of the collaborative.

Numerous studies have expanded upon into the significant gap between home and school environments, highlighting recurring challenges faced by children whose primary language is other than English when acquiring school-level literacy skills (Scollon & Scollon, 1981; Scribner & Cole, 1991; Heath, 1993). This disparity becomes particularly concerning given the strong correlation between oral language skills and literacy development (Snow, 1991). When children are disconnected from the decontextualized language prevalent in formal schooling, their ability to learn to read and write is severely hindered, leading to diminishing chances of success throughout their educational journey.

Qualls (2000) observes that oral traditions within families are characterized by “high oralcy,” which refers to a high level of oral-verbal literacy. Qualls’s discussion of high oralcy connects oral performance and competence to literacy as a communicative practice, rather than solely as a written-text ability. Wertsch (1991) describes the schooled discourse as the voice of decontextualized rationality. He distinguishes between decontextualized and contextualized forms of discourse by explaining that the former is used to represent referentially semantic content, while the latter projects representations that are concrete and inclusive of the communicative intent that is deliberately and clearly framed by the interlocutors.

The student’s home language, then, is not just defined by language dominance or proficiency, but also by the variable language use, including literacy among speakers and their relationships to each other and their utterances. Understanding this sociolinguistic tapestry embedded in a bilingual bicultural context is crucial for teachers who must make curricular decisions. These decisions involve selecting activities and strategies that frame the oral and literacy perspectives. This approach helps students successfully renegotiate discourse differences and enhances their flexibility in using both languages simultaneously (García, & Kleifgen, 2019).

The use of the fable genre falls directly under the strategic curricular decision-making and in effect, brings oral and literate traditions deeply rooted in the native language of the student into the school domain. The teacher is able to facilitate children’s interaction inclusive of discourse styles that are used commonly in the home and the school. The use of the fable genre and the dialogue generated between and among students and teachers in a fable writing activity functions as a unique discourse style of its own that blends and negotiates between two traditionally separate modes of language use. The fables shared through read-aloud and dialogue serve as mediating filters. The writing of original fables by students represents an expressive outlet that combines the use of oralcy and a literary voice along with their own (Qualls, 2000).

Students crafted a story centered around a lesson, a remarkable literary skill that even adults find challenging. An analysis of the lessons embedded in their original fables reveals that the young writers heavily relied on practicality as a criterion. This suggests a blend of contextualized and decontextualized discourse styles. Writing fables provided children with an opportunity to negotiate between these two discourse styles and express their creative voice. Notably, given the moralistic nature of the fable, it’s important to emphasize that the choice of genre wasn’t driven by a preconceived need for students to develop a repertoire of self-righteous expressions.

Some Spanish-speaking parents use regularly and freely the didactic devices inherent in the Spanish language as a means by which to inculcate values to their children such as dichos or proverbs (Zuñiga, 1991). The ethnographic research of Delgado-Gaitan (1990) verifies the rich repertoire in the discourse used by predominantly Spanish-speaking Mexican American families. The students’ self-edification incorporated in writing their own fables adds a plausible dimension of self-control that is empowering to young students who may feel stifled by the external forces of the social, economic, and linguistic barriers.

The Use of Fables and the Sociocultural Context

To comprehend the persistent academic failure among Latino students, a sociopolitical cultural framework is essential. The Fable Writing Project directly and indirectly addresses some of these issues. The voices of students and their families who are underrepresented and marginalized within our society are often silenced by a dominant oppressive ideology that perpetuates the status quo. While young students may not fully grasp the political and social climate of our society, they often recognize the unequal economic and social positions of their families and the role of their ethnicity (skin color, language, culture) in these disparities. I discuss these and related topics in Volume Three of the Discovering Our Experiences Project,  in the article, “Creating the Magical World of a Mediated Curricular Model.”

Since fables are often shared orally, the use of dialogue naturally accompanies the writing process. When children write fables, they create conflicts or tensions in their characters and provide a resolution in the form of a lesson. This context creates an opportunity for dialogic discourse, as described by Freire (1970) as the foundation for problem-setting and solving, which is central to critical pedagogy. For instance, when analyzing the conflicts in the fable “El cochinito,” by Arnold Lobel (1992), about a pig’s dilemma over staying away from sweets, the discussion led to the realization of the problems associated with other types of addictions, such as those found in street drugs and alcohol. As a result of engaging in large group dialogue with the students, yet another venue for dialogue opened up between the teacher, the university educator, and students. In other words, the dialogue continued between two teachers and students, that led to conversations about their stressful lives, their families, and the importance of an education. Our conversations were centered around the need to shape the curriculum or adapt it to make it more responsive to the needs of the students. This is a pattern that was repeated in almost every fable writing project classroom.

The fable writing project proved to be invaluable in providing students with outlets for creative self-edifying expressions that facilitated their self-empowerment process.

The Teacher’s Role

Fable writing projects, while unique and beneficial for students, realize their full potential largely through the role of the classroom teacher. A teacher’s awareness of the political and social functions of schools and their role in these processes is crucial for curriculum decision-making. Central to understanding schools’ societal roles is recognizing that educational institutions primarily serve self-serving functions, integral to the dominant ideology’s philosophy and structure. In this context, teachers are tasked with educating students, preparing them for fulfilling lives, fostering their positive and productive qualities, and enhancing their secondary attributes. This is a monumental task, a formidable challenge that demands immense proportions of effort and skill.

Schools, historically serving as steadfast institutions, symbolize freedom, truth, and liberation within the realm of democratic idealism. Inspired by the success stories of the civil rights movements, schools are perceived as platforms for realizing visions of change and liberation. Teachers, embracing this perspective, have the privilege of actively engaging with the political, social, and historical context of education in our society. By doing so, they can guide students towards overcoming oppressive systems and fostering a more just and equitable world. An enlightened teacher frames a curriculum along the needs of the students, resulting in a design that is more purposeful, meaningful, and responsive.

Bilingualism as a Powerful Mediating Tool

Language, a powerful mediating tool at the teacher’s disposal, plays a crucial role in shaping communication. Bakhtin’s (1981) insights into the dialogic nature of communication highlight how utterances carry social and political undertones. Unaware of this, teachers may inadvertently convey to their students in subtle or powerful ways that their native language  is inferior to the dominant language. The overwhelming connotations can lead students to perceive their language and culture as less significant and valuable. Even without realizing it, teachers’ utterances often reference the structure of power and domination. Even the stylistic switching of language codes can carry underlying messages laden with social and political implications.

Teachers’ interconnections with the classroom, the school, and society can be analyzed through Foucault’s (Sarup, 1993) concept of power expressions. Foucault posits that power manifests itself in every relationship. This power may be so pervasive within an individual’s network that they may not even be aware of it. Generally, every individual is part of networks of relations that are intrinsically linked to the culture. Expressions of power originate from socially constructed orientations, such as language, mores, customs, and so on. An entrenched member of the culture systematically works to maintain the network and actively participates in the process of social reproduction. Foucault’s ideas have far-reaching implications that address the sustenance of school culture, even when the practices are subtly detrimental and harmful to the students.

Helping students write their original fables in their native language offers a powerful model of social, cultural, and political dimensions. The interactive dynamism revealed through dialogue, where language acts as a deliberate mediator, and the social, political content within a literary context presents an alternative vision of a highly charged curriculum that is multidimensional in addressing the needs of the students it purports to serve.

The Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project

The Funds of Knowledge for Teaching (FKT) Project, an educational model focused on the professional development of teachers learning about their students through home visitations. The project is designed to facilitate teachers to adopt innovative curriculum paradigms to work effectively with culturally and linguistically diverse students. The FKT Project relies on inquiry and reflection to enable teachers’ creativity, strengthening their investigative, research skills based on anthropological cultural perspectives. The collaborative research group, consisting of four faculty members from the University of Houston and eight teachers from the Houston area schools. In the academic year-long project, university and school participants engaged in monthly workshops, refining their research capabilities, providing reflection and feedback, and organizing their data, and writing-up their final report. The final reports are featured in this volume.

All of the research collaborative teachers worked with diverse student populations, which is perhaps the most significant motivator for becoming involved in exploring and developing alternative ways to make the curriculum more meaningful and responsive to their students’ needs

One of the crucial factors that facilitated the transformation process was the ethnographic techniques employed by the teachers to gain insights into their students and their families way of life. By temporarily relinquishing their teaching responsibilities and assuming the role of ethnographers, the educators exhibited distinctive teaching and learning methodologies.. As researchers, they reflected upon their learning journey through a personal and experiential lens, providing valuable insights and lessons for other teachers to examine.

Present within the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching are two propositions that are crucial to change in today’s educational reform efforts. First of all, it is a viable alternative to traditional parental involvement models where teachers assume that they have the knowledge and expertise in educating children and parents are to follow along in supportive roles. Secondly, the FKT Project also allows teachers to acquire critical knowledge beyond the school that directly affects the way they perceive the role as teachers and as curriculum planners. The benefits of engaging in the FKT Project with colleagues and teachers seemed expansive, far-reaching, and relevant, thus satisfying two important points in the criteria for selecting collaborative research projects.

As University research funds became available, my colleagues and I embarked on a joint venture that turned out to be both intriguing and rewarding, albeit time-consuming. The four participating professors chose two teachers each to coach and provide technical assistance, but also offered a generous amount of moral support. The project culminated in the development of research reports that are included in Volume Four of Discovering Our Experiences. In retrospect, the initial phase of this collaborative has become clear as the first step. Its fruits of labor have revealed endless possibilities that we have yet to develop into an actionable plan. I suspect that our sustained dialogue will continue to spill over into what we’ve learned from this collaborative into other research endeavors for quite some time.

Teachers’ Voices as the Guiding Beacon

The success of our collaboration with teachers hinges on the perspective we cultivate by learning from them. By providing both leadership and support, we must actively engage in learning alongside teachers and perhaps even learn how to learn from them. Our effectiveness in working with them is crucial as we collect key data that reveal as much about their experiences as about their emerging understandings and perspectives. Central to gaining insight and achieving greater results within a collaborative setting is the role of the university researcher.

As I perceive it, the role of the university researcher collaborator is primarily that of a mediator. There is no distinction in terms of leading; each player assumes both the role of leader and follower. Rather, what takes precedence is a task at hand, constructing knowledge and generating genuine dialogue. The research project takes center stage, and collaborators find a stable medium by which to work in tandem, individually and collectively. The only clear delineation of roles is in determining who assumes the authorial voice. But, by using the narrative approach as part of reporting the research, the collective voices emerge, not just the authors. Bateson’s (1982) analysis of double description, i.e., viewing phenomenon from several points of view, serves as a framework for generating multiple voices and incorporating them within the narratives.

The teachers’ published narratives reveal aspects that we couldn’t initially observe. Their writings demonstrate a journey of personal transformations, which had a significant impact on both their work and their personal lives. We are equally impressed with the participating teachers’ perception of themselves as change agents, having made decisions to modify their perspectives and/or strategies for implementing their curriculum. Additionally, we are captivated by the development of their relationships with parents in more meaningful ways as a result of their involvement in the collaborative projects. We are particularly interested in how participating teachers can influence other teachers, creating a ripple effect that can lead to increased participation in action research projects by other teachers and university personnel. This idea brings us to the final topic of my discussion, which is the role of voice in the inquiry/reflective process.

Greater Voice, Greater Participation

As a result of the published papers presented in this volume, other teachers and practitioners will gain access to the outcomes of a teacher researcher’s inquiry and reflection processes. Although each narrative presents a unique story, collectively, they convey the prototype voice of the teacher, resonating with the majority of teachers. Perhaps the strength of the teachers’ voices lies in their ability to inform their peers in a relevant and convincing manner. In such narratives, teachers’ voices focus on common themes while expressing their ideas and emotions in diverse ways. Consequently, a collective can speak to a broader audience in a more profound way than a single voice, effectively conveying a convincing representation of the ethnographic profile inherent in their narratives. Within a collective, the authorial voice is represented as parts of the collective, thereby mitigating the tendency of one person to monopolize the group. 

The iterative pathway characteristic of the inquiry/reflective, voice process relies on the expression of voice to continue and intensify as dialogue unfolds among interested practitioners. Furthermore, collective teacher-researcher narratives can serve as valuable resources for studying grounded theories, recurring practicing principles, and organizing frameworks.

Therefore, it is crucial to provide venues for teacher researchers to express their unique voices for various purposes, such as communicating their research findings, generating ideas, and engaging in problem-posing and solution-finding. The Discovering Our Experiences Project  serves as a stepping stone to empower teacher researchers in their journey of self-transformation and to become catalysts for the much-needed change in our educational institutions.

Conclusion

The development of teacher research collaboratives enables university researchers and teachers to collaborate and address critical educational issues. However, once the collaborative is established, a system of participatory balance must be developed. Essentially, a new network emerges within an existing system, creating opportunities for the extension of the research collaborative model. The work presented in this volume is far from complete. There is a pressing need to involve more practitioners in the inquiry and reflective process. Additionally, we should improve the linking and support strategies to better facilitate teacher researchers. By allowing teachers more flexibility in selecting their research agendas, we can enable them to pursue their specific interests and achieve their personal and professional goals.

The general sentiment among the teacher researchers who participated in the collaboratives discussed in this and the previous volumes is that the teacher research collaborative work must continue because it is perhaps the most effective way to investigate one’s own work and, in doing so, enjoy each other’s company.

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