How Existential Funds of Identity can Enrich the Funds of Identity Concept

Abstract

Both Funds of Knowledge and Funds of Identity have been developed as effective approaches that can help teachers to affirm marginalised learners’ personal, familial and cultural identities in the mainstream classroom. However, the role that negative experiences and emotions might play in affirming learner identities remains under-researched. Existential funds of identity has been offered as a development of the Funds of Identity concept which facilitates the whole spectrum of human experience and emotion (Poole, 2017a, 2017b; Poole & Huang, 2018). However, existential funds of identity has only been superficially defined. For example, it isn’t clear whether this concept should be understood as an additional category of funds of identity to go with the five developed by Esteban-Guitart (2012) or whether it relates to all of the existing five categories as a modality of experience that brings into focus the positive and the negative. Moreover, the issue of whether drawing upon negative experience might lead to the perpetuation of deficit thinking also requires more explication. This conceptual paper addresses these issues by offering a more theoretical articulation of existential funds of identity and its relationship with the Funds of Identity concept.



Author Information
Adam Poole, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China

Paper Information
Conference: ACLL2018
Stream: Learner identities

This paper is part of the ACLL2018 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon