Families and Teachers Doing Mathematics Tasks Together: Considering Funds of Knowledge and Positioning

In this article, we explore the power relationships and positioning that occurred between caregivers and teachers who engaged in mathematics tasks as a part of a year-long project involving workshops. Specifically, we explore the shifts in power and positioning that occurred when the tasks were grounded in the caregivers’ funds of knowledge, in contrast to the positioning that occurred during problem-solving tasks that were not. Our analysis indicates that using funds of knowledge in mathematics has the potential to create collaborative and not hierarchical relationships between caregivers and teachers. This result has implications for the mathematics classrooms of multilingual learners.