From Community Funds of Knowledge to Glocalized Experiential Learning: A Conceptual Model for Culturally Responsive Science Education

Science education remains vulnerable to a persistent separation between formal school knowledge and the practical, cultural, linguistic, ecological, and technological knowledge that learners and communities already possess. This conceptual article develops a publishable theoretical synthesis that connects three bodies of scholarship: funds of knowledge, cultural memory banking, and glocalized experiential learning. Drawing from González’s treatment of culture as hybrid and dynamic, Handa and Tippins’s use of cultural memory banking in Philippine preservice science teacher education, and Hammond’s anthropological model of urban science education for language-minority families, the article proposes the Community Memory–Glocalized Experiential Learning (CM-GEL) model. The model positions community knowledge not as decorative cultural content but as an epistemic resource for designing science instruction, health education, environmental learning, and inclusive educational technologies. The framework proceeds through six recursive movements: ethical entry, dialogic elicitation, memory banking, curriculum translation, experiential enactment, and community return. The article also situates the model within Nagal’s body of glocalized educational work, including experiential learning resource packages, science modules, public health IEC material development, sexuality education, Indigenous learning barriers, and assistive technology. The model contributes a practical and ethical pathway for teachers and curriculum developers who seek to bridge school science, lived experience, and community benefit without reducing local knowledge to extractive academic data.