Article

Funds of Identity: A new concept based on the Funds of Knowledge approach

Culture & Psychology 2014, Vol. 20(1) 31–48 ! The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1354067X13515934 cap.sagepub.com

Moise`s Esteban-Guitart University of Girona, Spain

Luis C Moll University of Arizona, USA

Abstract The main purpose of this paper is to articulate a theory of human identity from a Vygotskian perspective. In doing so, we use the term ‘‘funds of identity’’ inspired by the ‘‘funds of knowledge’’ approach. We use the term funds of identity to refer to the historically accumulated, culturally developed, and socially distributed resources that are essential for a person’s self-definition, self-expression, and self-understanding. Funds of knowledge—bodies of knowledge and skills that are essential for the well-being of an entire household—become funds of identity when people actively use them to define themselves. From our point of view, identity is made up of cultural factors such as sociodemographic conditions, social institutions, artifacts, significant others, practices, and activities. Consequently, understanding identity requires an understanding of the funds of practices, beliefs, knowledge, and ideas that people make use of. Keywords Identity, funds of knowledge, qualitative approach, sociocultural theory, funds of identity

Since William James developed a non-metaphysical conception of self, which he called The Empirical Self or Me (James, 1890/2007), there have been various investigations aiming to clarify the psychological, social, and cultural nature of self, considered as ‘‘an organizing construct in the behavioural and social sciences’’

Corresponding author: Moise`s Esteban-Guitart, Department of Psychology, Institute of Educational Research, Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Girona, Plac¸a Sant Dome`nec, 9, Girona 17071, Spain. Email: [email protected]

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(Leary & Tangney, 2005, p. 3). James (1890/2007) defines the Empirical Self as ‘‘all that he is tempted to call by the name of me. But it is clear that between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves’’ (p. 291). From this perspective, the self includes everything that we consider ‘‘ours’’ (mine), those things, objects, or people who are part of our experience—whatever might be considered as meaningful to us. For us, it is here, perhaps, that we find the novelty in James’ psychological analysis: drawing attention to the inclusiveness (individual plus cultural experience) of the self. That is, the experience of self is not a metaphysical concept but, rather, an empirical one and it is linked to what the person does; to his having some phenomenological, subjective experience of it, as will be argued later through Vygotskian concept of ‘‘perezhivanie.’’ However, identity, as a concept, is often an ambiguous, confused, and abstract term. There is no general agreement about what identity is and how it is constructed. Depending on the theoretical approach, identity can be understood as a cognitive phenomenon or a cultural process, as a personal or social thing (Leary & Tangney, 2005). Indeed, it must be stressed here that ‘‘identity’’ is not a thing, but a social construct vaguely referring to a vastly complex set of phenomena. ‘‘Identity,’’ such as ‘‘culture,’’ has part of people everyday vocabulary and what Bruner refers as Folk Psychology or common sense. Everyone talks about identity. Indeed, ‘‘identity’’ is usually coupled with a range of adjectives to indicate some properties of a category, such as ‘‘black identity,’’ ‘‘sexual identity,’’ ‘‘catholic identity,’’ ‘‘muslim identity,’’ and so on. Probably, this concept is indispensable and probably there is not any one possible right definition. For us, it is not possible to state that any specific definition of identity is the correct one and others are wrong. However, it is important to clarify the specific meaning for theoretical and empirical reasons. By ‘‘clarify,’’ we mean to explain the specific manner in which the term ‘‘identity’’ can be employed in a particular theoretical context. That is the main purpose of this paper and the definition we will suggest. In other words, we shall try to situate ‘‘identity’’ in a broader theoretical and empirical context, that is, the funds of knowledge approach based on a Vygotskiana point of view. Although Vygotsky wrote down only rudimentary ideas about personality and did not say anything about identity, he does offer various theoretical instruments that help to conceptualize identity. Indeed, cultural psychology and sociocultural research have brought their own integrated perspectives on self and/or identity (Bruner, 2003; Christopher & Bickhard, 2007; Coll & Falsafi, 2010; EstebanGuitart & Ratner, 2011; Gee, 2000; Hermans & Gieser, 2011; Holland & Lachicotte, 2007; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Penuel & Wertsch, 1995; Valsiner, 2002). In what follows, we deal with identity from a Vygotskian perspective. Rather than revise the large literature on identity, we sketch out one approach that draws on one consistent strand of that literature. This is not to deny that other, equally useful, approaches are possible, based on different selections from the literature

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(for example, based on Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development). In that sense, we shall describe the funds of knowledge approach in order to situate the issue of identity within this research. In our view, funds of knowledge become funds of identity when people actively internalize family and community resources to make meaning and to describe themselves. In that regard, we will describe certain principles on identity and some strategies to study funds of identity. Finally, we will conclude by suggesting further directions for future work in order to develop the concept of funds of identity.

Identity from a Vygotskian point of view At the end of his brief life, Vygotsky—in connection with the ‘‘social situation of development’’ (Bozhovich, 2009) —used the concept perezhivanie, which is usually translated as ‘‘emotional experience,’’ ‘‘lived experience’’ or simply as ‘‘experience.’’ During the 1933–1934 academic year, Vygotsky delivered a lecture at the A. I. Herzen Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. In this context, Vygotsky (1998) argued: A unity can be noted in the study of personality and environment. This unity in psychopathology and psychology has been called experience [perezhivanie]. The child’s experience is also this kind of very simple unity about which we must not say that in itself it represents the influence of the environment on the child or the individuality of the child himself; experience is the unity of the personality and the environment as it is represented in development (...) experience is the actual dynamics of the unity of consciousness, that is, the whole which comprises consciousness (...) To state a certain, general, formal position, it would be correct to say that the environment determines the development of the child through experience of the environment. (p. 294)

According to Van der Veer and Valsiner (1994), the term perezhivanie ‘‘serves to express the idea that one and the same objective situation may be interpreted, perceived, experienced or lived through by different children in different ways’’ (p. 354). Lived experience is the result of any transaction between people and the world, emphasizing the subjective significance of the situation on the person. That is to say, cultural practices do not impact directly on behaviour. Instead, lived experience—the subjective side of culture—mediates and organizes behaviour. Lived experience is a dynamic, fluid and complex unit of analysis between personality characteristics and environmental characteristics. On the one hand, a child’s previous experience determines what he or she brings to the situation. On the other, the social and cultural situation offers possibilities and constrictions. How these ‘‘external’’ situations are refracted by the child is the lived experience, an indissoluble whole that integrates the individual and the world: first there is how I am experiencing (understanding, feeling) something. Then, each event or situation has a different effect on behaviour depending on how each person understands it.

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It is important to note here that for Vygotsky (1979), consciousness is the object of analysis, ‘‘the subject matter and task of psychology’’ (Zinchenko, 2009). Consciousness is a complex psychological phenomenon that manages behaviour. In other words, behaviour is driven and mediated by consciousness and consciousness means experiencing lived experiences. In other words, cultural practices and factors are mediated by psychological phenomena such as motivation, perception, memory, and self-concept. Through these subjective processes (lived experiences), people respond to cultural factors and, moreover, generate culturally appropriate behaviour and particular identities to meet the requirements of the situation. It can be argued that identities, created and recreated in interactions between people in a given context, are lived experiences on self. In that sense, identity is a conceptual artifact that contains, connects, and enables reflection over the emotional and cognitive processes of self-understanding and self-defining, in the past as well as in the present and the future. Through sociocultural practices, individuals not only learn the actual activities, but they also learn to be members of these social and cultural communities, to experience themselves in a particular ways (Coll & Falsafi, 2010; Lave & Wenger, 1991). From our point of view, lived experience is a pathway to subjectivity that can help to integrate identity phenomena in social, historical, and cultural activities. In other words, it helps to take into account the phenomenological side of psychological experience. However, according to the cultural-historical legacy, it can be argued that any lived experiences are culturally organized because they internalize, incarnate, and originate in a social context guided by cultural processes. In that sense, Gonza´lez Rey (2011) argued that subjectivity is a cultural unity of affect and intellect (emotions and symbolic processes): the product of an ongoing subjective sense of multiple and dynamic configuration of these two aspects through human activities. People form senses of themselves (identities traduced by self-lived experiences) in relation to the ways they inhabit the roles, positions, and ‘‘cultural imaginaries’’ (Holland & Lachicotte, 2007) that matter to them. Through the mediation of others (Moll, 2001), via symbolic forms, people actively internalize self-other dialogues which develop over time (Valsiner, 2002). For Holland and Lachicotte (2007) identities, as a higher order mental function, ‘‘are culturally-imagined and socially-recognized types – social and cultural products – that are actively internalized as self-meanings (treating one’s own behaviour reflexively as symbolic) and serve as motivation for action. People identify themselves with (and against) these socially-constructed types in the various domains of their everyday lives.’’ That is the reason why Penuel and Wertsch (1995, p. 83) recommend that researchers study the formation of identities ‘‘in local activity settings where participants are actively engaged in forming their identities; to examine the cultural and historical resources for identity formation as empowering and constraining tools for identity formation; and to take mediated action as a unit of analysis.’’ In line with these sociocultural studies of identity, Holland and Lachicotte (2007) conclude that identities are simultaneously social products (collectively developed and imagined social categories, for example any ethnic identity such

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as ‘‘Tsotsil identity’’) and personal formations in practice (self-meanings developed through a sociogenetic process that entails active internalization). Identities are also symbolic (identities are mediated by signs and symbols), reflexive (identities are involved in recognizing the self-in-practice and the self as a person), and a source of motivation for action (identity, as with any high order mental function, is a psychological device which is used to organize behaviour in any activity and to make meaning and purpose). For us, it is important to emphasize here that identities are social products, cultural devices, a kind of box of tools which can be used to define oneself. In other words, the self-lived experiences, even if individually told, are products of a collective storytelling (Sfard & Prusak, 2005), ‘‘master narratives’’ (Hammack, 2011), ‘‘Discourses’’ (Gee, 2000), ‘‘politics of ideological becoming’’ (Tappan, 2005), or ‘‘schematic narrative templates’’ (Wertsch, 2002). Then, identity can be understood as a consciousness device (see, for example, Hofstadter, 2007), self-lived experiences, but should also be understood as the objects—technologies—as an externalization, and devices, of one’s identity, what we will call funds of identity. To summarize, from the Vygotskian perspective, identity is embedded in concrete, historical cultural factors such as social institutions, artifacts, and cultural beliefs. Through participation in human activities and practices—socialization and education—people develop and create lived experiences within themselves. For now, we accept the definition of identity provided by Stryker (2000): ‘‘Identity refers to an internalized set of meanings attached to a role played in a network of social relationships, with a person’s self viewed as, in important part, an organization of the various identities held by the person’’ (p. 6). Later, we will review and redefine this definition according to the funds of knowledge approach in order to suggest a reconceptualization of identity that we call funds of identity.

The funds of knowledge approach: Connecting home, school, and community At the intersection of anthropology, psychology, and education, the funds of knowledge approach assumes that families and communities are valuable educational resources. As argued by Gonza´lez, Moll, and Amanti (2005), this approach is based on the simple premise that people are competent and have life experiences; consequently, they have accumulated knowledge or ‘‘forms of capital’’ (Rios-Aguilar, Kiyama, Gravitt, & Moll, 2011). Grounded in the seminal works by Ve´lez-Iba´n˜ez (1983) on U.S. Mexican households and their social and economic systems of interchange, and from a sociocultural approach, the concept of funds of knowledge is defined by Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonza´lez (1992) as: ‘‘these historicallyaccumulated and culturally-developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being’’ (p. 133). Households accumulate multiple bodies of knowledge, ideas, and skills in order to maintain the household and individual well-being. For example, Latino households in Arizona have accumulated a wide breadth of knowledge in areas such as agriculture, mining

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and metallurgy, ranching and animal husbandry, cross-border transactions, painting, literacy and biliteracy, design and architecture, religion or business (Gonza´lez et al., 2005). These funds of knowledge are the result of people’s lived experiences, including their social interaction, their participation in multiple job markets, and their varied language-related activities (Gonza´lez & Moll, 2002; Moll & Cammarota, 2010). Indeed, by culture we mean practices and lived experiences, that is, what it is that people do, and what they say about what they do. Through these lived experiences grounded in the processes of everyday life and daily activities, individuals consume and use funds of knowledge. It is important to note here that funds of knowledge are artifacts or psychological tools (Vygotsky, 1978), that is, distributed semiotic resources that mediate human behaviour. In other words, funds of knowledge do not exist solely within the mind of the individual, but rather they are distributed among persons, artifacts, activities, and settings (Gonza´lez, Andrade, Civil, & Moll, 2001; Moll, Tapia, & Whitmore, 1993). The key point is that human beings and their social worlds are inseparable. This is an important idea to keep in mind in order to understand the concept of funds of identity that we will develop later.

Funds of identity: The distributed and mediated nature of identity We have learned from the funds of knowledge approach that through investigating and documenting the many particular funds of knowledge that students have, their identities can be validated and incorporated into the school (Gonza´lez & Moll, 2002). Indeed, Ve´lez-Iba´n˜ez and Greenberg (1992) introduce, to a certain extent, the idea of funds of knowledge to attempt to understand how U.S. Mexican children construct their cultural identity. Nevertheless, their approach lacks a conceptualization of identity and the methodological strategies to capture specifically the identity of students and their families. In this regard, the goal of this section is to provide a definition of identity and to illustrate some methodological strategies that can be used to study it. Identity is often considered to take place solely within the mind of the individual. It is felt to be something in people’s heads that is fixed—a trait of their personality. On the contrary, identity is embedded in culture and vice versa; thus, we cannot reduce human identity to individual properties or traits. Instead, it is always mediated (Penuel & Wertsch, 1995), distributed among people, artifacts, activities and contexts. People define themselves through other people and through the artifacts and resources—visible and invisible—of their social and cultural worlds. In that sense, social relationships, significant others, particular activities and practices, political ideologies, religious beliefs or any other artifact, such as a flag or a song, become resources for making and expressing identity. There is no frontier between the world and the identity of individuals (‘‘No man is an island entire of itself’’ as poet John Donne (1572–1631) said). We totally agree with Scribner (1990) when she wrote: ‘‘Vygotsky’s special genius was in grasping the significance of the social

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in things as well as people. The world in which we live is humanized, full of material and symbolic objects (signs, knowledge systems) that are culturally constructed, historical in origin and social in content’’ (p. 92). Identity is in things as well as people. The world in which we live is ‘‘identitized,’’ full of resources for making people’s identities. Inspirated by the Stryker definition of identity mentioned above, we could consider that identity refers to an internalized and externalized set of meaning, practices, and distributed resources embedded in ways of life and contexts for learning. In an important way, a person’s self can be viewed as a dynamic organization of various resources, socially, historically, and culturally created. It is important to note that there are four critical components in our definition of identity. First, identities comprise all those people, skills, knowledge, practices, and resources that people have acquired and now use through their involvement in their various activities, such as in the labor market and in diverse social interactions. Second, these artifacts are internalized as well as externalized, that is, they can encompass various people (for example, a flag is an artifact which involves a particular national identity). Third, people form their identities (visions of themselves) through these acquired resources by engaging in social activities and by observing how members interact. More specifically, social institutions and practices (work, school, church, sport) work as a hub of activities, resources, and patterns of identity that are available to children. And this, directly or indirectly, through explicit or implicit educational processes, forms their identities. Fourth, identity—as with any other higher order psychological process—is essentially social in origin. People actively appropriate discourses, narratives, and visions or models of identity, but this is always cultural material. Funds of knowledge are repositories of identity to which people have access. Consequently, the funds of knowledge are funds of identity when people use them to define themselves. Specifically, what we understand by funds of identity are historically accumulated, culturally developed, and socially distributed resources that are essential for people’s self-definition, selfexpression, and self-understanding. In other words, the term funds of identity which we are using here denotes a set of resources or box of tools and signs. Based on Vygotski’s legacy, Gillespie and Zittoun (2010) distinguish between tools, which are used to act upon the world (a car mediates our relation to the physical world), and signs, which are used to act upon the mind (language mediates our relation to our own and other minds). It is important to note that Gillespie and Zittoun (2010) emphasize that these distinction is not based on the cultural element itself, but upon how it is used. Indeed, these cultural products (the novels people read, the films they see, the music they hear and sing) act as symbolic resources in the process of development (Zittoun, Duveen, Gillespie, Ivinson, & Psaltis, 2003). To us, these tools and sings (cultural products and symbolic resources), ‘‘identitized,’’ have been historically accumulated and culturally developed; they are socially distributed and transmitted; and they are essential for constructing one’s identity and for defining and presenting oneself (Esteban-Guitart, 2012). In other words, symbolic devices chosen and used by a person can support processes of

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identity making. Nevertheless, resources for making identities or self-lived experiences are not only artifacts (tools and signs). Social institutions, practices, social relationships, and geographies are materials from we made our self-understanding and develop self-definitions. We would subdivide these funds of identity into five major types: (1) Geographical Funds of Identity (for example, the Grand Canyon as a symbol of Arizona state in the United States of America), (2) Practical Funds of Identity (any meaningful activity such as work, sports, or music), (3) Cultural Funds of Identity (for instance, national flags or social category such as introversion/extroversion, age, gender, or ethnic group), (4) Social Funds of Identity (significant others such as relatives, friends, or colleagues), and (5) Institutional Funds of Identity (any social institution, such as family, marriage, or the Catholic Church).

How to detect the funds of identity? Some illustrative examples Traditionally, research in this field has used ethnography techniques to detect funds of knowledge. Specifically, teachers visit homes, explore the surroundings, and conduct interviews in order to detect family structure, labor history, household activities (daily and weekly activities, distribution of household tasks, and education and language), parental attitudes, money, religion, education, and ethnic identity. With regard to ethnic identity, the interviewer may ask questions such as ‘‘Do you ever talk to your child about being Mexican (or Yaqui)?’’ and ‘‘Do you make it a point to participate in activities and events that make your child feel a part of the Mexican/Yaqui community?’’ In this section, we suggest, in addition to the standard interviews, the use of visual methods, graphic elicitation, and arts-based methods (Bagnoli, 2009) to examine the funds of identity. In particular, we suggest the self-portrait (Bagnoli, 2009; Esteban-Guitart, & Vila, 2010; Gifre, Monreal, & Esteban-Guitart, 2011) and a version of relational maps called ‘‘significant circle.’’ The self-portrait consists of a drawing the participant makes of him or herself. The instruction is the following: ‘‘I would like you to show me on this piece of paper who you are at this moment in your life. If you wish, add the people and things most important to you at this moment in your life.’’ Figure 1 shows an example of the self-portrait technique of a young 19-year-old Tzotzil woman. Once the drawing has been obtained, the interviewee is asked to explain it. ‘‘I have drawn my community, with the church, I love this church and... what else, this is my traditional dress - I love it. My mum, she is the most important thing for me, my sister. What else... nature... because. . . this is what I am studying right now. . . ecotourism, alternative and rural tourism would not be possible without nature. We are nothing without it. The trees and flowers are our life.’’ The self-portrait gives us information about the participant’s funds of identity. In this case, about her community, her family (especially her mother), and nature (and what she is studying—tourism). In other words, the self-portrait informs us about the woman’s social funds of identity (significant others), her cultural funds of

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Figure 1. Example of self-portrait.

identity (artifacts such as tools or cultural concepts), her geographical funds of identity (geographical settings), and her practices or forms of life. This example illustrate how identity is a distributed and culturally mediated product, which is distributed among other people (the mother, in our example), social institutions (for example, the church), geographical territories (her community), and artifacts (for instance, the dress). It is a lived experience, embedded in social and cultural sources of identity. The community, the family, or the local geography (nature) are sources of funds of knowledge that become funds of identity when participants appropriate them and use them to define themselves. Indeed, these sources of self or funds of identity are signs through which human beings constitute themselves. People are perpetually engaged in processes whereby they define and produce their own self-understanding.

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Figure 2. Alba’s self-portrait.

Obviously, this technique can be used right across the age range and has been administrated successfully to young children and adolescents right through to people of advanced age (Gifre, Monreal, & Esteban-Guitart, 2011). Figure 2 shows an example of the identity drawing of a young woman of 19 years of age. In this case, she has drawn on a university binder and shown different things that she likes: Japanese culture, a computer, psychology, peace, music, nature. Once the drawing has been obtained, the interviewee is asked to explain it. By way of example, we see an extract from the explanation given by the author of the drawing in Figure 2. Interviewee: This is what I am at the moment. There are things I like a lot, such as literature, Japanese culture, the Internet, role-playing, psychology, music, fantasy. Researcher: And all these things are important to you... Interviewee: Yes. I’m a student at the university and I love psychology, chatting with my friends on the Internet, doing role playing and that kind of thing. Researcher: Why have you represented Japanese culture?

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Interviewee: Because I love Japanese drawings. I love to draw and I try to imitate Japanese drawings. Researcher: And what do those two faces represent? Interviewee: My state of mind. Sometimes I’m happy and sometimes I’m angry and sad: that’s my personality.

Saubich and Esteban-Guitart (2011) illustrate how to detect specific funds of identity using self-portrait technique in order to design specific – significative – curriculum. In particular, they studied funds of knowledge and identity of a Moroccan family living in Catalonia (Spain) in order to document how teachers can use these funds of knowledge to make direct links between students’ lives and classroom teaching. For example, they interviewed a 12-year-old, who is in her sixth year at primary school. She drew herself very large in the center of the paper, with the women in her family, her mother and her three sisters, to her left—all the females, including herself, were wearing the veil. She drew the male members of the family, her father, with a beard, and her three brothers on the right. She defined herself as being a joker, who was fun and outgoing, who likes music, body art (henna), dancing and singing, and who became sad when it rained. The ‘‘henna,’’ also called mignonette tree, is a flowering plant used since antiquity to dye skin, hair, fingernails, leather, and wool. The name is also used for the art of temporary tattooing based on those dyes. Saubich and Esteban-Guitart (2011) take advantage of the student expertise on henna in order to design several teaching activities developed through the funds of identity. Another technique that can be used to detect people’s funds of identity is the ‘‘significant circle.’’ This task consists of asking participants in the study to summarize, by means of a single-page representation, their most important objects, activities, people, institutions, and hobbies. It involves the person drawing a circle and placing within it the different objects, activities, institutions, and people that he or she perceives as being relevant, important, or significant. Those that are nearest the middle of the image are the most important for the subject. Figure 3 shows an example of one such ‘‘relational map’’ in which the interviewee highlights her family (children, husband, and mother) as well as sporting activities and handicrafts. In this particular case, the funds of identity detected are: significant people (children, husband, and mother), social activities (sport), and hobbies (handicrafts). The idea is to obtain a ‘‘portrait,’’ executed by the person herself, which features the most important people, objects, and activities in her life. As in the self-portrait technique, there is a follow-up discussion of the resulting document: the researcher asks questions, while the participant explains what she has represented or drawn. Figure 4 shows two more examples of a ‘‘significant circle’’ drawing of a child of five years of age and her sister of eight years of age. In both significant circles are represented the family and the school. However, there are different funds of identity such as drawing, sister of five years of age, and orchard, sister of eight years of

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Figure 3. Example of a ‘‘significant circle.’’

Figure 4. Two examples of significant circle by girl aged 5 on the left and girl aged 8 on the right.

age. Teachers can use both funds of identity to develop teaching units. For example, they can design a biology teaching units or mathematical teaching units through a ‘‘garden module.’’ In that sense, Civil (2007) provide us an example in a fourth-/fifth-grade combination classroom.

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The purpose of the two techniques is to generate information on the lived experiences in relation to the participant’s identity in order to collect his/her funds of identity. This can complement an ethnographic study using other procedures, such as in-depth interviews. Obviously, researchers can use other techniques in order to obtain further detail of participants’ narratives on identity. However, these two strategies, self-portrait and significant circle, are easy ways to detect and express relevant information on identity from the participants’ perspective. The idea is to attempt to develop a mathematical apprenticeship, for instance, in a school setting, by embedding the mathematical learning in the context of a sociocultural activity in which the pupils want to participate and in which they are able to participate given their actual abilities.

Conclusion The funds of knowledge approach is based on a simple premise: regardless of any socioeconomical and sociocultural ‘‘deficit’’ that people may or may not have all families accumulate bodies of beliefs, ideas, skills, and abilities based on their experiences (in areas such as their occupation or their religion). The challenge consists in connecting these bodies of educational resources with teaching practice in order to connect the curriculum with students’ lives. In other words, funds of knowledge research is driven by an equity agenda that capitalizes on building on the students’ and their families’ knowledge and experiences as resources for schooling. Although research on funds of knowledge has been extensive, this approach has several limitations: use of a single methodological approach or dependence on adult household practices as the primary unit of analysis (Moll, 2005; RiosAguilar et al., 2011). The concept of funds of identity allows us to take into account different methodological approaches (using different strategies or techniques such as self-portrait and significant circle) (Esteban-Guitart, 2012). The use of these qualitative strategies can help researchers examine the variation in students’ funds of identity, which is critical to the advancement of this conceptual framework. Another limitation of the existing research on funds of knowledge relies in the choice of the unit of analysis. As acknowledged by Moll (2005) and RiosAguilar et al. (2011), the existing research on funds of knowledge has informed educators and researchers primarily about adult practices and social worlds. However, children, too, create their own funds of knowledge, which may be independent from the adult’s social life. As such, we propose the need to study the existing funds of identity of students. We argue that funds of knowledge approach should also be studied from a Vygotskian perspective on identity. This would include the examination of processes that convert or transform various funds of knowledge into other more tangible students’ funds of identity. From a Vygotskian point of view, humans use artifacts (cultural and psychological signs and tools) to mediate their interactions with the world and other people. We suggest, more specifically, that humans use such artifacts to create,

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express, and develop their identities. Indeed, the artifacts themselves are resources for constructing identity. It is in this sense that identity is embedded, distributed, and spread among geographical locations, people, social institutions, activities and practices, and artifacts such as a poster, a cross, a computer, or a ring. These systems and forms of identity, including art, language, people, mathematics or sport, are ways of being, knowing, and experiencing. Nevertheless, these powerful resources are sometimes overlooked and untapped by school curricula. This is one of the reasons why schools sometimes become a separate world, unconnected to people, their families, and their communities. It has been suggested that one of the main roles of schooling is to create social contexts (sociocultural zones of proximal development) for mastery of and conscious awareness in the use of these cultural tools (Moll, 1990). The challenge is to create ‘‘Zones of Proximal Identity Development’’ (Polman, 2010) in order to recognize and maintain optimal identities for learning (Coll & Falsafi, 2010). In other words, learning takes place when participants, supported and guided by others, are involve in activities that enact connections between prior knowledge and experiences (incrusted in their identities) and new information. In that regard, funds of identity acts as a lens through which we view and absorb new information and new identities. It is a dynamic composite of who we are and who we are becoming, based on what we have learned (and we are learning) from both our academic and everyday experiences. It could be argued that students learn and remember new information best when it is linked to relevant prior knowledge, specifically ‘‘prior funds of identity.’’ Understanding the student’s funds of identity helps teachers to select the appropriate instructional materials and to connect the curriculum content to student’s culture, identity, and experience. Encouraging the learning of new funds of identity is an instructional task that occurs between children and adults outside of school, and students and teachers inside of school. The ‘‘Zone of Proximal Identity Development’’ (Polman, 2010) includes portions of apprenticeship immediate ‘‘trajectories of identification’’ and prior funds of identity that impact their participation in the learning environment on a moment-to-moment basis, and which lead to their longer term development of identity translated into new funds of identity. The concept we suggest here not meant to be a final integrative statement in funds of knowledge research. Rather, the distinction between funds of knowledge and funds of identity is put forward as an attempt to review and take stock. In that spirit, we want to conclude by considering a problematic issue that will need to be considered in future theorizing. Funds of identity, provided by the self-portrait and significant circle, are internalized meanings from social context. However, it can be argued that people are not aware of other funds of identity such as hegemonic societal values and concepts that may be so naturalized that one may not think to include it in their self-portrait or their significant circle. In other words, there are invisible funds of identity (such as individualistic values, Esteban-Guitart, 2011; Ratner, 2011) which mediate

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behaviour and identity but is absorbed in the act. In order to deal with this problem, we need to use interpretation and other qualitative strategies to detect the possible funds of a particular identity. In sum, further theoretical conceptualization and empirical research is needed in order to precise the nature of visible and invisible funds of identity. Funding This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant number EDU2009-12875).

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Author biographies Moises Esteban-Guitart, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Girona. His research focuses on articulating how the development of identity is closely intertwined with issues of culture and education. His ongoing research program examines the continuities and discontinuities between school and family of children of the Africa living in Spain. His work has been published in the Narrative Inquiry; Mind, Culture, and Activity; Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne; Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless; Universitas Psychologica; Estudios de Psicologı´a; Cultura y Educacio´n; The Spanish; Journal of Psychology or Infancia y Aprendizaje, among other journals. Recently,

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he has published some entries in The encyclopedia of critical psychology (edited by Thomas Teo, Springer, 2014) and co-authored (with Iliana Reyes) a chapter in the Handbook of research on children’s literacy, learning and culture (edited by Kathy Hall, Teresa Cremin, Barbara Comber, and Luis Moll, 2013, John Wiley & Sons). Luis C Moll, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture in the College of Education, University of Arizona. He joined the faculty of LRC in 1986. Prior to that, from 1979 to 1986, he worked at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition and the Communications Department, both of the University of California, San Diego. His main research interest is the connection among culture, psychology, and education, especially as it relates to the education of Latino children in the United States. Among other studies, he has analyzed the quality of classroom teaching, examined literacy instruction in English and Spanish, studied how learning takes place in the broader social contexts of household and community life, and attempted to establish pedagogical relationships among these domains of study. His work has been published in the Educational Researcher; Theory into Practice; Journal of Reading Behavior; Anthropology and Education Quarterly; Theory and Research in Education; Urban Education; Journal of Teacher Education; Mind, Culture, and Activity, among other journals. Recently, he has co-edited (with Kathy Hall, Teresa Cremin, and Barbara Comber) the Handbook of research on children’s literacy, learning and culture (2013, John Wiley & Sons), co-edited (with Norma Gonza´lez and Cathy Amanti) the Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms (2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), and published a book entitled L. S. Vygotsky and education (2013, Routledge).