Cultural Intelligence in the School

Abstract

A wide range of research, including Scribner's cultural psychology, work by Rogoff and Lave on daily and situated cognition, and the notion of funds of knowledge (Moll et al.), has demonstrated that all people have cultural intelligence which allows them to address and resolve many problems in daily life. In the same vein, the study of successful educational actions within the framework of the INCLUD-ED project reveals that more types of intelligence must be included in schools if educators are to respond successfully to the educational demands of highly heterogeneous classrooms. Using two case studies of community-based educational projects in Spain, this article shows how it is essential to recognize the cultural intelligence of all students in order to connect learning in classrooms with life outside school and thus provide meaning and a context for school knowledge.