學生優良心得(一)

1.What are funds of knowledge and why are they important?

Funds of Knowledge are historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge, and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being. In the aspect of teaching, Funds of knowledge recognises and understands children of different communities and backgrounds. Through literacies, texts, projects, assignments, interviews, and observations into pupils’ families, teachers collect the diverse background culture resource; and form after school study groups to discuss the variety of resources they obtained, and how they could integrate such results into a regular classroom. This could enhance teaching quality by incorporating and catering the needs of all students, nevertheless their race, colour and cultural practice, while celebrating and honouring their heritage.

In the case of school education, teachers overlooked the importance of Funds of Knowledge as they may not be necessarily important in a campus emphasising academic performance. However, Funds of Knowledge can be found as simple as household chores, nursery rhymes of the whites, jump rope rhymes of the blacks, etc. Toddlers may be watering flowers or singing while jumping ropes, in fact children obtain knowledge during the process, such as planting or linguistic features like directionality of words, word boundaries and rhyming etc. While similar results for teenagers can be obtained too by discussing themes and topics presented in literature and popular culture, further expanding to investigate issues within their own community and/or society through projects, gaining much more than they received sitting inside a classroom and reading textbooks.

This also applies to preserving traditional cultures, especially in the case of immigrants in Taiwan and indigeous Taiwanese. First, for Taiwan immigrants, they may be living in a place with little to none media or content related to their roots. However, with the passing down of traditional tales, holidays, proverbs, guides, recipes from their origins, all these will enrich the immigrants’ cultural background. Second, for the indigeous Taiwanese, they preserve their tribes’ culture by following, and passing down traditional practices by generations. Weaving practices have a fundamental role in such indigenous tribes, which such woven garments were worn during important cultural activities. But before putting on complex patterns of long history, the process of handling raw materials to cloth-weaving must be taught by women to their girls. Besides, these indigeous tribes often practice a vast range of traditional arts such as planting millets and making baskets by hand. With children taking on responsibilities to carry out such practices and preserving their culture and heritage, such a Fund of Knowledge will bring more diversity into a classroom if their backgrounds are incorporated into teaching plans, allowing other schoolchildren to take a glimpse at, acknowledge and learn to respect those differ from them within one room.

By learning from a child and their community, their families’ stories and literacy practices, how children are involved in them, honouring and building upon the beliefs and values of children and families, such incremental process is crucial if the goal of an education system is to benefit the growth of all children, let them learn the beauty of respect and compassionate, and let them shine with pride of their heritage.

2.What is cosmopolitanism and how might it be related to transnational funds of knowledge?

Cosmopolitanism is a fundamental orientation to the stranger, and a welcoming of differences, while transnational awareness can be a significant Fund of Knowledge for children of immigrant families, and that could be the foundation of some children building a cosmopolitanism view of the world. Transnational text can be assumed in many forms such as photographs, drawings, videos, logos, and live communication, and that children may record what they have seen, heard or experienced of various cultures in such methods to better understand the world. With the advancement of technology over the years, such transnational literacy practices are gradually presenting themselves digitally, like music from home countries and following sports teams from different countries, children are getting more exposure to such digital transnational practices that are modelled and taught by their parents. As the coming of age, these children have been adapting more of multicultural information, and that their mounting transnational awareness is enough for them to build up a cosmopolitan stance, allowing them to empathise, pay attention and commit into issues related to their community and society, while compassionate enough to embrace differences.

3.What is your number 1 reason for becoming a teacher and how might you make your community a better place?

My top reason for becoming a teacher (by accident) was for the intellectual works involved. Each country, or region has different sets of educational systems, and it has always been an intriguing debate on how the education system should be altered to suit our next generation.

As a Hongkonger, I have been going to schools with English as the main instruction language, being immersed in an English environment for a decent amount of years, and that English is taught in English. However, after arriving in Taiwan to study English Instruction, what surprised me the most was how the majority of my courses are conducted in Mandarin, with professors switching languages when needed. This has me wondering, “Are we really training English teachers like this?”

Surely, English is majority’s second language, and that English teachers are in urgent need to prepare the next generation for globalisation and connecting to the world. With my past experience, I firmly believe one has to be fully immersed in an environment of their second language in order to be a fluent user of it. But with my current experience, is the goal still possible when your second language is taught in your first language? Would there be any difference between two sets of teaching methods? How do you teach, and how can you learn a second language in a better way to become a fluent user of it? These would be some controversial topics that I like to explore and do research, for the benefit of education and teaching.