Research project builds on “Funds of Knowledge” scholarship of the late Luis Moll in article published in special issue of “Studies in Psychology” honoring his legacy.
As a graduate student, Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, had the opportunity to learn alongside the esteemed University of Arizona professor Luis Moll and to draw upon his scholarship of “Funds of Knowledge.” In her dissertation, Rios-Aguilar argued that just as investment in human capital theory increases productivity and yields important benefits, the activities highlighted in Funds of Knowledge literature — engagement in informal economies, adoption of survival strategies, and the pursuit of formal education — similarly enhance productivity, skills, and pedagogical innovation.
For Rios-Aguilar, a professor of education and chair of the Department of Education at UCLA, Moll’s scholarship and its asset-based, anti-deficit approach to understanding students and supporting learning remain central to her continuing research. That belief in the importance of Moll’s work has also engaged graduate students at UCLA in what they sometimes refer to as the “Funds of Knowledge life.”
Recently, Rios-Aguilar and Ed&IS doctoral students Brianna Wright and Davis Vo joined together to publish a new article in a special issue of “Studies in Psychology,” building upon Moll’s Funds of Knowledge scholarship. “Repackaging the work: a Funds of Labor Identity approach to understanding people’s labor histories,” is also published in Spanish as “Reempaquetando el trabajo: un enfoque desde los Fondos de Identidad Laboral para comprender el historial laboral de las personas.”
In the paper, the authors build on early Funds of Knowledge research that emphasized how labor histories and workplace skills provide valuable knowledge and resources, and explore how those experiences contribute to the formation of an individual’s identity. The authors introduce the concept of a Funds of Labor Identity as one in which the experiences of labor and work is recognized as an asset, pushing back against deficit views of students engaged in particular types of work and labor. The researchers posit that Funds of Labor Identity is a critical concept that examines how work shapes the ways in which students express, understand, and define themselves.
In the study, the researchers draw on in-depth interviews with 17 young adults who work in warehouses in Southern California to explore the value of labor as a component of how students understand their identities in the context of work. In doing so, the authors expand upon how Funds of Identity are formed, learned, transmitted and socially distributed through participation in formal and informal labor markets. The research highlights how the workplace and the socio-political contexts of their labor markets inform how young adults conceive of their labor identities and educational and occupational trajectories.
The researchers contend that a Funds of Labor Identity approach not only acknowledges the value of labor experiences and history but also offers education leaders an opportunity to integrate and construct learning approaches that embrace and cultivate students’ labor identities. They propose learning about students’ Funds of Labor Identity as an alternative, asset-based, critical, and more humane approach to understanding the lived experiences of students who attend college and work, and highlight how colleges as transformative sites for learning, can imagine and integrate people’s labor identities in educational practices to further their educational and career aspirations and experiences.
The article, “Repackaging the work: a Funds of Labor Identity approach to understanding people’s labor histories,” is published in Studies in Psychology- Special Issue: Tribute to Luis C. Moll (1947–2024) / Número Monográfico: homenaje a Luis C. Moll (1947–2024).
UCLA Ed&IS talked briefly with researchers Brianna Wright and Davis Vo about the Funds of Labor research and the legacy of Luis Moll.
UCLA Ed&IS: In your own words, what this paper is about?
Brianna Wright: First, we want to recognize and thank Hector De Leon for coordinating, planning, and conducting interviews with people working in warehouses while doing research as an UCLA undergraduate student alongside Cecilia. His efforts in recognizing how warehouses have shaped the lives of young adults are critical at this time, and we would not have been able to write this paper without his work.
What we wanted to do with this paper is reconceptualize how we think about work, and especially people who work. Funds of Labor Identity aims to disrupt the deficit framing of certain types of labor and understand how people conceptualize their identities within the workplace. It also considers how labor or work identities are shaped by interactions among employees, internal dynamics, company culture, and people outside of the workplace.
Davis Vo: Yes, we are appreciative of Hector, and we would not have been able to write this paper without his labor and the ways he was able to interact with participants. I think another important part of this piece is that work is a big feature of the college-going experience for students, and often, we see them as separate environments instead of intersecting learning ecosystems. We see workplaces as a site for learning not just conventional notions of “technical” skills, but a place where people are learning a lot about the world, about themselves, about how they relate within the contexts of others and their broader communities.
What’s the most important thing you want people to understand about this new paper?
Wright: What I would love for people to take away from this paper is to consider how complex a workplace can be and how complex identity formation can be within the workplace. In many of our discussions with Professor Rios-Aguilar, we talked about how work can be framed, especially for people who work and go to college, as a distraction, or neutral activity. In workplaces, students are learning about how companies radically shape local geography, labor markets, and how work opportunities can change a local economy. The people in our dataset are acutely aware of the systems at play in their communities.
Vo: Another big takeaway is that we can take an asset-oriented, critical, and humane approach to understanding workplaces and the geographic, the social, political context of workplaces and labor markets as a means to understand how they relate and inform students’ educational and occupational trajectories and goals.
What got you interested in Funds of Knowledge?
Wright: I first learned about Funds of Knowledge when I was an undergraduate studying math education. It gave me a better sense of what I brought to my academic space, and what I brought to mathematics. I became interested in Funds of Knowledge as a framework that honored communities of color. It helped me to dispel my own deficit thinking and made me reflect on how powerful my community’s assets are, especially in relation to math and science.
Vo: Being in the education field, initially as a practitioner for 10 years prior to coming to UCLA, I would hear phrases like, “We should take asset-based approaches or be non-deficit” or “We should create classroom and educational environment where students feel comfortable to bring their full selves in that space.” Funds of Knowledge plays a foundational role in how we conceptualize and theorize what educational spaces look like and the possibilities of what they could be. I’m interested in how language, messages, and communication frames, particularly about students from historically and racially minoritized communities, because they impact how people understand students in our educational spaces and the practices and policies we implement. Funds of Knowledge reminds me to think about how we go about doing education in asset-based, critical, and humane ways and to center the voices of students from historically and racially minoritized communities.
What did you personally learn and how does it shape your thinking about your work?
Wright: On this project and paper, I learned that we need to consistently interrogate how we perpetuate or engage with deficit discourses. The people in our study talked about how people in their community viewed warehouse work/warehouse workers.
Sometimes these perceptions could be deficit oriented. Despite these deficit orientations, students resisted and consistently reaffirmed their humanity, in the midst of working for a company who they felt viewed them as easily replaceable. One of the things that I love about the research and work that I do is that it allows people to consider their history, their culture, their background as valued, rich, and important. I enjoy talking about Funds of Knowledge with people because they reflect on their own labor histories, their own life experiences. My research and the conversations I have with others help to recognize the inherent worth in the work we do, even if society may think otherwise.
Vo: One of the compelling features of the interviews was just hearing the young adults talk about warehouses. They were cognizant of exploitation that takes place in the warehouse, in the strategic ways that they needed to interact with their colleagues and managers, and how they made different decisions about going to college and work. Despite an educational policy context that is seemingly centering on economic and workforce development, college and career alignment, and post-college outcomes, education leaders do not always elevate this complex process in asset-based ways.
Using Fund of Labor identity gives us an opportunity and a framework to do that work: to center students lived and labor experiences and think about what is being learned and how that relates to college and career identities and decision-making.
What are some of the implications of this paper for higher education?
Wright: I hope we can change the narrative surrounding working college students and consider work as a place for learning. If students are spending a significant amount of time in their workplace, which many community college students are, how can we translate some of this knowledge to their coursework or their career trajectories? How can we make the connection to the workplace? We’re hopeful that this theoretical framework elevates workplace learning and identity formation, providing a tool to connect work and self.
Vo: I think there is a wealth of knowledge that can be learned from the experiences students are having in the labor market–whether at warehouses or other workplaces. Given how common it is for students to go to college and work, it’s a lost learning opportunity if we erase or minimize those lived experiences and all the valuable things students are learning in the workplace. Funds of Labor Identity will provide us a thoughtful path towards being more thoughtful about how we talk about those experiences and the ways that they can be integrated within educational settings.
This paper is published as part of a special issue honoring the late professor, Luis Moll. Can you talk briefly about his importance?
Wright: Luis Moll is critical to this research. His work with Funds of Knowledge has been foundational, especially in bringing Funds of Knowledge to education and considering how student assets can be integrated into the classroom.
His work continues to develop and expand the field of Funds of Knowledge. I didn’t have the opportunity to meet Professor Moll, but I think that there was so much heart in this paper and in the work that we did, because of Cecilia’s connection to him and his legacy. Her connection and work helped us understand what funds of knowledge means to us. It’s been a beautiful experience to honor his work and legacy in this way.
Vo: I am greatly appreciative that we got to contribute to the special issue. I think he is so implicitly and explicitly connected to so many influential ideas in education. As you think about teacher education, Funds of Knowledge are informally or explicitly cited in a lot of the readings that are in teacher training curriculums. His ideas influence how educators can choose to interact with students and to understand students. There is a long line of influential academic ideas that were influenced and will continue to be influenced by Luis Moll and his ideas. Hopefully, this research honors his legacy and his scholarly contributions to the field of education and practice, policy and research.