Leaning Over the Fence

This paper is a response to an article, “Creepy White Gaze: Rethinking the Diorama as a Pedagogical Activity” (Sterzuk & Mulholland, 2011), published in the Alberta Journal of Educational Research, in which Sterzuk and Mulholland critiqued a heritage fair entry, “Great Plains Indians.” I report on a school-university collaborative research project that examined the ways in which out-of-school practices and knowledges of Canadian Aboriginal students might provide these students with access to school literacy practices. Grounded in a ‘funds of knowledge’ approach, this paper presents an alternative reading, explaining how students’ linguistic and cultural resources from home and community networks were utilized to reshape school literacy practices through their involvement in a heritage fair program

Fence (mathematics) · Mathematics education · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Engineering · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Psychology