From Cultural Capital to Curricular Liberation: Centering Minoritized Students’ Knowledge, Identity, and Communities

Abstract

This manuscript examines how minoritized students, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and immigrant students, serve as active producers of cultural knowledge that enriches the broader educational community [2, 3, 4, 5]. Drawing on scholarship on abolitionist teaching, funds of knowledge, community cultural wealth, community-based education, reality pedagogy, Indigenous educational theory, and teacher learning [1–8, 12, 13], this paper argues that when curriculum is responsive to community life rather than treated as fixed and culturally neutral, schools can become sites of agency, belonging, and liberation [1, 6, 13]. The analysis considers how students’ identities and histories can be represented in the curriculum, how such representation can broaden the worldviews of all learners, and how educators must engage in continual reflection and professional learning [8, 12, 13]. It also considers culturally responsive practices that schools can cultivate students' sense of belonging, which is linked to positive academic, social and emotional, behavioral, and health effects [9–11, 14].