“I come from the village”: leveraging rural lived experience as pedagogical knowledge in teacher education

Purpose This study investigates how situated rural lived experiences serve as pedagogical knowledge in teacher education. Focusing on South African rural education, it draws on the researcher's experiences of childhood, schooling, teaching, and teacher education to show how everyday rural practices generate and transmit knowledge. Using the Funds of Knowledge (FoK) framework, it challenges deficit views of rurality while acknowledging the diversity of rural communities. Design/methodology/approach The study uses an analytic autoethnographic design. Autobiographical material was retrospectively reconstructed from recalled experiences and contemporaneous teaching notes. These freely written accounts were then analysed using the FoK framework to identify knowledge, skills, values, practices, and learning processes embedded in rural life. Findings The analysis identifies rural language practices, oral traditions, music, craft, agricultural practices, ecological knowledge, and community-based learning as situated resources through which knowledge is acquired and transmitted. These experiences provide sources of pedagogical thinking and possible connections between community-based knowledge and formal disciplinary knowledge, without claiming direct curriculum alignment or representativeness. Research limitations/implications The study is autoethnographic and context-specific, drawing on my personal rural experiences; it therefore does not claim to represent all rural communities or educational contexts. Much of the knowledge was acquired through everyday participation, family practices, observation, and community life rather than formal education, and its classroom application requires careful contextualisation. As the study prioritises depth, reflexivity, and situated understanding, it does not establish statistical generalisation or measurable educational outcomes. Further research could examine these insights through classroom-based studies across diverse rural contexts. Practical implications The findings suggest possibilities for teacher educators to recognise and critically engage with learners' community-based knowledge through contextually responsive pedagogical approaches. Social implications The study contributes to efforts challenging deficit representations of rurality, recognising the diversity of rural experiences and the situated nature of community knowledge. Originality/value The study contributes a situated South African autoethnographic account to scholarship on rural knowledges and Funds of Knowledge by examining lived rural experience as pedagogical knowledge. It brings Funds of Knowledge into dialogue with autoethnography and decolonial perspectives.