The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.

Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Maronites, Latins, and Armenians have been the primary historical communities that make up the multicultural landscape of Cyprus. However, the continuing conflict between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots has geographically, socially and psychologically segregated these communities, while the influx of economic migrants, especially after Cyprus’s accession to the EU in 2004, has, in turn, contributed to Cyprus’s challenges, arising from multiculturalism, in an altogether different perspective. How has education, over time, addressed and re-examined all these issues introduced by Cyprus’ complex evolving multiculturalism and ethnic diversity? How can education better attend to current problems of coexistence in Cyprus, and what kind of role can it play in a federal re-united country? This collection of essays introduces an innovative and critical examination of these questions in order to provide relevant answers. More specifically, it examines how formal, non-formal and informal education contributed to the creation and perpetuation of the Cyprus conflict, as well as to prejudices, inter-ethnic stereotypes, and misperceptions. The book also discusses how education could contribute to conflict transformation, empathy and peaceful coexistence amongst the different Cypriot communities, and how this has been possible in other multi-ethnic societies. The volume will be of interest to students, practitioners, and researchers interested in peace education, multiculturalism and conflict transformation.