What Happens When Funds of Knowledge-Based Home Visits Are Carried Out: Experiences and Perspectives of Teacher Educators and Preservice Teachers

Abstract

Current educational settings have been characterized as increasing diversity and demographic divides between teachers and students in all educational levels which result in some permeating alienation and multiple boundaries between teachers and students, schools and families. In this qualitative dissertation, my central concern was the preparedness and capacities of teacher educators of color and preservice teachers to transcend boundaries in educational and social settings. Under the theoretical considerations of a transformative worldview and critical theory, I examined when a Funds of Knowledge (FoK)-based home visits project was carried out, what happened in a school site situated in the Southwest of the United States, what happened to teacher educators of color who taught and organized this project and what happened to preservice teachers who conducted the Fok-based home visits respectively. Findings include: (a) When a FoK-based home visits project was carried out in an elementary school, a Foucauldian web of power relations among multiple constituents emerged. These participants included one teacher educator, predominately White preservice teachers and their public-school mentor teachers who acted and reacted to one another based on their different understandings and interpretations of the relevance of this agenda in a public school. The power relations were multilayered, multifaceted, multidimensional and in constant flux which were also accompanied by ideological production of apparatuses of knowledge and the construction of subjects and subjectivities. (b) When two Asian international female Graduate Teaching Associates (GTAs) working as teacher educators were charged to teach and organize FoK-based home visits project, they were placed into contact zones where western progressive ideology of multicultural education, dominant racial, cultural, social and ideological discourse encountered their Asian-selves. The autoethnographic layered accounts they constructed suggested that they voluntarily and involuntarily implemented coping strategies which they coined as concealment, conformity, detachment, trapped, disillusionment, awakening, realignment, and distancing. They also traversed a non-lineal transculturation process that was coined as alienation-awakening-retreat-realignment-distancing. Findings suggest their strengths are endurance, adaptivity and persistence. (c) When three female preservice teachers with diverse backgrounds conducted FoK based-home visits, their (im)mobilities of minds, bodies and boundaries showcased their engagement with the families, which was to a certain degree reserved. They could take on non-controversial differences regarding language and cultural practices, but struggled to appreciate issues of race and class. In addition, they seemed to have reservations and some unresolved misgivings about furthering engagement with families in the surrounding communities as a future professional practice. The analysis suggests that the transformation, or a capacity to effectively transcend boundaries to build reciprocal relations in educational and social settings, as an endeavor for teacher education program to integrate multicultural educational approach of FoK-based home visits is not fully achieved. This is due to the emergent power relations among multiple constituents, teacher educators of color struggling to cope while undergoing an incomplete transculturation process, and preservice teachers’ multiple and complex (im)mobilities of bodies, minds and boundaries during home visits experiences. I also provide recommendations to researchers, teacher education program administrators, teacher educators, policy makers and the field of multicultural education.