Among social justice efforts to make curriculum more engaging and achieving for ‘less advantaged’ learners, the Funds of Knowledge (FoK) approach, as developed by Moll, Gonzalez and associates (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 20054. Buck , P. and Sylvester , P.S. 2005 . “ Preservice teachers enter urban communities: Coupling funds of knowledge research and critical pedagogy in teacher education ” . In Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities and classrooms , Edited by: Gonzalez , N. , Moll , L.C. and Amanti , C. 213 – 232 . Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates . 

View all references; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 199210. Moll , L. , Amanti , C. , Neffe , C. and Gonzalez , N. 1992 . Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms . Theory into Practice , 32 ( 2 ) : 132 – 141 . 
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View all references), offers sound conception and a track-record. The Redesigning Pedagogies in the North project (RPiN) significantly embraced this approach (with some methodological differences). In this paper I first outline how curriculum designed around funds of knowledge with use-value in learners’ lifeworlds challenges the exchange-value power by which competitive academic curriculum selectively privileges cultural capital embodied in elite social-structural positions. I then draw on both RPiN data and FoK literature to examine problematic tendencies to build curriculum around (1) light (i.e. positive) but not dark knowledge from learners’ lifeworlds; and (2) knowledge contents but not ways of knowing and transacting knowledge (funds of pedagogy). In exploring these problem spots, I analyse how systemic boundaries between lifeworlds and schools pose constraints for recontextualising funds of knowledge into school curriculum.