A.T. Jones & M.J. de Vries (eds.), International Handbook of Research and Development in Technology Education, 579–597. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. MARILYN FLEER & GLORIA QUIÑONES 40. ASSESSMENT OF CHILDREN’S TECHNOLOGICAL FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE AS EMBEDDED COMMUNITY PRACTICES INTRODUCTION Cultural-historical theory has provided a dynamic approach to framing research and has drawn scholars’ attention to community activities for building children’s capabilities (Vygotsky, 1998). Within this context ‘funds of knowledge’ best describes how learning in communities generates social, economic, and cognitive capacities within the home and community (see Moll & Greenberg, 1990). In this chapter, assessment is framed as developing an understanding of a collective cultural-historical enterprise through positioning children as researchers of their own technological knowledge and capability, as located within their home and community practices in the form of funds of knowledge. A study of young children engaged in researching their own home, school, and community environments in relation to their technological activities is outlined in order to make visible the conceptual argument being put forward in this chapter. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES OF CONCEPT FORMATION Moreland and Jones (2000, 2004), Moreland (2003), and Rohaan, Taconis, and Jochems (2008) have argued that teachers’ perceptions and understandings of technological concepts directly influence their formative interactions during technology education in classrooms. For example, Moreland’s research showed that teachers’ growing understandings about the nature of technology and knowledge in different technology areas greatly “enhanced understandings about ways to plan, teach and assess technology”, particularly in relation to giving descriptive ongoing feedback to children (p. 303). Jones and Moreland, in drawing upon sociocultural theory, argued for the importance of building teacher conceptual knowledge in technology education not just for more effective assessment, but for enhanced technological practice in schools. Vygotsky (1987) argued that if we are to understand concept formation, then we should study concepts “in the process of change” (pp. 64-65) rather than use methods which decompose “the whole into its elements” through “partitioning the whole into its units” (pp. 46-47). Yet the examination of dynamic conceptual