Funds of knowledge in primary education: understanding ‘distance’ in the classroom and curriculum as a complex and changing space.

From September 2019 the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) in England has used the concept of cultural capital to measure a school’s performance. This thesis analyses how Ofsted uses its power to construct a problem to fit the intended solution – what Wood (2019) describes as a ’circular discourse’ (p. 790). Ofsted's (2021d) understanding of cultural capital as the solution to the problem of children’s deficit of ‘essential knowledge’ (p. 37, p. 38) is contrasted with the work of Bourdieu.

Ofsted’s use of cultural capital provided the impetus for this research in a larger than average-sized inner-city primary school with a diverse community. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) the thesis explores how Ofsted has adapted the concept of cultural capital, and examines the impact on equality in education of introducing cultural capital into the Education Inspection Framework (EIF). Alternative theories are explored through semi-structured focus group interviews with teachers to evidence explanations for teachers' understanding of funds of knowledge in the context of their pedagogy, curriculum planning and assessment.

The key findings from this study evidence that teachers use the knowledge valued by diverse social groups to enrich the basic curriculum entitlement of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and the National Curriculum. The concept of funds of knowledge offers a set of conceptual tools which can be used to reduce ‘distance’ in the primary classroom and create curriculum as lived experience accessible to all children. This study makes recommendations for policy and practice including the explicit use of children’s interests to inform teachers’ pedagogy, curriculum planning and assessment. Further, this study makes an original contribution to knowledge by conceptualising curriculum as a complex and changing space.