Using community resources as funds of knowledge to promote science learning in Thailand

Abstract

The connection to a students’ home community can have a positive and substantial impact on student learning. Especially, learning outside the classroom context makes science learning more relevant and accessible to the students. The knowledge or experiences that students bring to the classroom and use from their home or community are called, "Funds of Knowledge" and serve as powerful resources to promote students’ meaningful learning. The National Education Act suggests schools to develop their school-based curriculum that provides the integration of the standards from the national curriculum with local knowledge, in addition of providing communities’ learning resources to support lifelong learning or informal learning. The aim is not only to promote subject matter knowledge learning but also to enhance the sense of pride in their culture. However, most schools have difficulty integrating the funds of knowledge from the community into their school-based curriculum, and how to support people in the communities to use their resources as sources of learning. The question of how to connect funds of knowledge with content knowledge is often asked and needs clarification. Thus, this chapter will provide information on how funds of knowledge can be used in science learning by giving examples of related research studies done in Thailand as well as the results from our study that demonstrate how community funds of knowledge were used to promote science learning. © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016.