Organizational Supports
Barriers from parents, family, and community also impinge on school
functioning. In their review of literature on science teachers’ beliefs about student
diversity, Bryan and Atwater (2002) report that teachers tend to ascribe problems
associated with nonmainstream students’ learning to the students’ lives outside of
school involving parents, family, and community, rather than to teachers’ beliefs
and actions toward students in the classroom. Such perceptions conflict with the
‘‘funds of knowledge’’ possessed by parents, family, and community that have the
potential to serve as valuable resources for school science (Gonzalez and Moll 2002;
Moll 1992). Thus, a challenge facing urban schools is to build connections between
schools and nonmainstream students’ lives outside school.