In this article, Marta Civil discussed the importance of community knowledge when developing math units. I was very pleased to read an article by a teacher-researcher who didn't use confusing jargon. Civil was part of a project called the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project (FKT). Rather than teaching the exact prescribed curriculum in the mathematics classroom, teachers would immerse themselves in the community to discover what was valued. For example, in one particular community there was a lot of construction and hence many of the parents were construction workers. The teachers would sit down with the families in their homes and interview them. From the knowledge that they gained, they would then create a math unit that built on the idea of construction. Right away the students felt more of a connection to their math. Some critics would argue that as soon as the out of school experience is brought in to the school, it loses its appeal. I believe that it is still more effective than not even trying to connect the two.
Being able to connect activities such as construction and gardening (from another study) with all of the curriculum proved to be difficult. It is definitely possible to make some connections, but other prescribed learning outcomes (PLO's) may not have been met. With the new BC curriculum, I believe that this would be much easier to do, now that the PLO's are more suggestions than required.
What Civil found to be extremely effective, was to actually bring in the parents as local experts into the classroom to help teach lessons. For the most part, parents in schools tend to be "in tasks such as monitoring the cafeteria, helping out with bulletin boards, [and] fund-raising efforts" (p.30). While these are all very important tasks and should not be under appreciated, bringing in parents/family as local experts would allow children to witness their teacher collaborating with another adult. Another small, yet important to note point, is that teaching can be a very lonely profession, and being able to work with other adults may help alleviate this.
In conjunction with parent-assisted learning, the children are expected to engage in lots of inquiry, and there should be a general transition from teacher-directed learning to student-centered learning. My question is this. In a community that is greatly diversified, how do you go about choosing what theme to use? If there are say five different themes to choose from, based on initial community-based interviews, by choosing one do you risk reducing the engagement of those students who don't relate to it? Could potentially do more damage than good?
