Exploring opportunities, complexities, and tensions when invoking students' everyday experiences as resources in educational activities

This paper aims to critically explore the opportunities, complexities, and tensions of invoking students' everyday experiences as resources in educational activities. We analyze data from teacher interviews, instructional work in classrooms, and parent–teacher conferences taking place at a lower secondary school. The analysis shows how teachers reflect upon the relationship between students' lives outside and inside school, some of the complexities and tensions that emerges when students' everyday knowledge is invoked in instructional work in classrooms, and how students' everyday lives are activated as resources in parent–teacher conferences by the participants for building meaning together. We discuss issues teachers may reflect upon when planning and conducting educational activities that are sensitive to students' learning lives and everyday experiences. •Teachers define students’ everyday experiences as important resources for engaging students as learners in school.•Some aspects of students’ activities from outside school are defined as more relevant for classroom learning than others.•Invoking everyday experiences in whole-class conversations requires teachers to maneuver among the different learning lives of students.•Students need guidance in making connections between everyday experiences and academic practices in schools.•Parent–teacher conferences can be used to identify students’ interests that can be used in instructional work.