Funds of Knowledge

Funds of knowledge is an approach to teaching developed by researcher Luis Moll and colleagues, beginning with ethnographic studies of Mexican-American households in Arizona in the late 1980s and early 1990s, built on the premise that every household, regardless of its economic circumstances, possesses historically accumulated bodies of knowledge and skill, in areas such as agriculture, trade, household management, folk medicine or religion, that are essential to its functioning and well-being. Moll's research team had teachers visit students' homes as researchers rather than as authority figures, documenting the practical knowledge families held and then designing classroom lessons that deliberately drew on it as an intellectual resource rather than treating students from working-class or immigrant households as arriving at school with deficits to be corrected. The approach is now a widely cited foundation for culturally responsive and asset-based teaching practice, particularly in schools serving linguistically and culturally diverse communities.