Educational settings are becoming increasingly diverse including culture, gender, ability and religious beliefs. Yet, a mono-cultural approach to teaching that prioritises some learners while excluding others continues to be adopted (Morrison et al., 2019). Building on past education declarations, the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) has a strong focus on equity and social justice with goal 1 calling for ‘The Australian education system [to] promote[s] excellence and equity’. Building on this, goal 2 seeks to develop ‘confident and creative individuals; successful lifelong learners; active and informed members of the community’. If we are to meet these goals, educators need to recognise and embrace the lifeworlds of all learners and use these as platforms from which new learning can build; something that is at the heart of culturally responsive pedagogies (CRP). This chapter argues that educational approaches founded on pedagogies that draw on learner’s lifeworlds, lived experiences and funds of knowledge (Zipin, 2009), foster enhanced educational engagement, achievement and wellbeing.

We utilize asset-based frameworks to examine how college-aspiring multilingual, mainly Latina/o and African American, adolescent students from immigrant backgrounds negotiate college-related pressures and constraints and employ college knowledge when mentoring emerging bilingual immigrant peers. Using interviews, post-mentoring reflections, and critical qualitative inquiry, we highlight the mentors’ agency, constraints, and lack of institutional support as they navigated college and financial-aid processes for themselves and their immigrant peers. We discuss policy implications and the need for future research on peers in supporting tailored college guidance and in empowering students from immigrant, low-income backgrounds given their institutional constraints.

The increase of immigrant-origin students in higher education presses the need for new ways of understanding their university experiences. Using the concept of Funds of Knowledge, this qualitative study highlights how students experiencing food insecurity use lessons from their families to strategically navigate selective, affluent environments of resources and privilege.

This chapter puts forth an argument for the use of appreciative advising (Bloom et al., 2008) as a means of building vital relationships with students of immigrant origin and a potential framework to increase retention of this student population. This versatile framework is relationally oriented to foster micro-climates in which students can identify their goals and ambitions while also envisioning the path to achieve these goals. To successfully employ appreciative advising, it is critical to shift focus toward privileging these students’ experiences and diverse knowledges. Anderson et al. (2019) referred to this as exercising cultural curiosity and cultural humility, actions which disrupt power while creating openness and investment in students (particularly those on the margins). By combining these concepts with a funds of knowledge approach, which builds on immigrant students’ communal resources, knowledges, and experiences, collaboration between advisers and immigrant students can lead to developing dialogic spaces where appreciative advising can be actualized (Anderson et al., 2019; Witenstein et al., 2022).

Chapter 8 opens by asking readers to reflect on the attributes of someone who they find trustworthy and believable. It then describes three attributes that Aristotle described for credible people: practical intelligence, virtuous character, and goodwill. Modern research on people’s perceptions of scientific sources finds similar attributes: expertise, integrity, and benevolence. The chapter reviews ways that science communicators can show these attributes. For example, we need to understand the phenomenon we’re sharing; we need to be honest, which can include saying "I don’t know" when applicable; and we need to be respectful. Being clear is a sign of respect for our conversational partners, as is sincere listening. This chapter returns to a comparison of the deficit model and funds of knowledge approaches before discussing ways to handle opinions that contradict the scientific consensus or that are in some way offensive. The Worked Example concerns stereotypes. This chapter’s Closing Worksheet asks readers to identify three things about their demonstrations that they are confident about and three things that they do not know related to their demonstrations.

Chapter 4 opens by asking readers to compare learning in formal and free-choice situations. This proceeds to a core goal of conversations for public engagement, which is to make our exchanges interesting enough that people want to talk with us. This chapter compares two approaches to teaching and learning: A deficit model approach assumes that the learner is in some sense empty or flawed, while the funds of knowledge approach assumes that the learner has a rich base of relevant prior knowledge. The latter approach is encouraged so that a science demonstration begins by probing an audience’s interests and then using that as a hook and an organizing principle. Six strands of science learning are introduced, with emphasis on the strand referring to a learner’s interest and excitement. Practical considerations include recognizing that no single science demonstration is likely to hit all strands equally well. The Worked Example shows this with detailed comments on a demonstration of language lateralization. Because public engagement often occurs in free-choice situations, getting and keeping an audience’s interest is critical.