Sustaining Students’ Cultures and Identities. A Qualitative Study Based on the Funds of Knowledge and Identity Approaches

Abstract

Recently, the notion of culturally sustaining pedagogy has been suggested to refer to different educational practices that share the will to recognize, maintain and develop cultural diversity in the classroom. The study presented here describes two empirical examples that illustrate teaching and learning processes in which the curriculum is channeled through the references of meaning, life events and experiences of students and their families. In the first example, curriculum—natural science and language—was linked with the experience of some families with the use of peanuts. In the second example, a discussion was generated around students’ cultural identities. These examples are based on funds of knowledge and funds of identity participatory research-action projects, and are the result of broader projects carried out in two specific educational contexts in Catalonia (Spain, Europe), a region characterized by a considerable increase in diversity and geographical heterogeneity in recent decades. These empirical cases are discussed within the framework of the development of inclusive pedagogies which, in addition to recognizing the living cultures and practices of students, allow these cultural references to be maintained and sustained, and encourage the construction of hybrid and transcultural identities in which ways of being and understanding life shared by the family culture and/or culture of origin are intertwined with the hegemonic culture and society.