The place of interests, agency and imagination in funds of identity theory

ABSTRACT

Funds of identity is a recent entrant to the field of identity theories. Located within sociocultural theory, the concept developed from the notion of funds of knowledge to consider all life experiences that collectively shape identity development. It draws attention to the relationships, settings, experiences, and cultural tools and symbols that are personally meaningful to people, and ways these mediate engagement with identity development. I make two contributions to advancing funds of identity theory. First, I provide empirical evidence with respect to a very young child’s engagement with funds of identity. I report findings related to Zoe, a child who participated with her family in a qualitative project on the interests of children aged from birth-to-five years old in Auckland, New Zealand. Second, I extend funds of identity theory through arguing that agency and imagination ought to be explicit concepts in this theory given that it foregrounds the capacity for humans to act on and imagine their worlds. Interest, agency, imagination and identity are concepts that can promote the dynamic view of development Vygotsky championed, and help to explain the way ongoing sociocultural mediation determines developmental possibilities and learning trajectories.

Acknowledgments

The project drawn on in this paper was funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education through the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative programme. It was reviewed and approved by the University of Auckland Human Ethics Committee.

Sincere thanks to all the participants in the project, especially to Zoe and her family and the teachers at Small Kauri Early Childhood Education Centre. I am also indebted to the many conversations and analytical dialogue firstly with members of the research team, in particular Maria Cooper and Daniel Lovatt, and more recently, with Tamar Weisz-Koves. I also thank Tamar for her critical reading of drafts of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, New Zealand [NA].