Cultural intelligence

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This is a response to the questions/prompts for this week’s critique article on intelligence, with a focus on cultural intelligence (CQ).

How teachers can promote cultural intelligence in their classroom? What kind of advice for educators would you give about the student’s use of social media and electronic devices in the school environment? Finally, do you feel that social media has helped you to improve your cultural intelligence? Why and how?

What great questions. I’m going to admit that I feel my use of Twitter and Slack have increased my awareness, knowledge and sensitivity toward differing cultural contexts. I would not pay attention to Muslim holidays or holy days without social media, since social connections I’ve developed in those spaces are in global contexts. Since I am insulated from most cultures in my predominantly white, conservative, geographic enclave in central Ontario, I would not have opportunities to learn or create with others in far-away places. My current work on the Mozilla Open Leaders project has furthered this cultural learning into new global contexts.

I’m going off on a tangent here, since I’m struggling with the idea that this is cultural intelligence. I see it more as a competence or perhaps even a literacy. It harkens back to Gardner’s premise of multiple intelligences (Willingham, 2009). So I had to look at the definitions for the terms:

  • Intelligence is understanding complex ideas and using forms of reasoning, and learning from experience (Willingham, 2009). Ultimately, this means an integration of long term memory with short term memory that leads to action or understanding, be it general (g) intelligence, verbal or mathematical intelligences (Willingham 2009).
  • Competence is the ability to do something successfully and efficiently (Oxford English Dictionary, n.d.).
  • Literacy is narrowly defined as the ability to read and write, but these days, it’s broadly thought of as knowledge and competence in specific areas e.g. mathematics, digital, social, cultural (Wikipedia, n.d.).

Villigran (2018) defines cultural intelligence (CQ) as the “capability to adapt and function effectively in new cultural situations” (p. 10). The components of cultural intelligence include drive, your motivation to learn about new cultures; knowledge of other cultures; strategy, an awareness of your own judgements; and, action, your behaviours in culturally challenging situations (Villigran, 2018). Hu, Gu, Liu and Huang (2017) fail to define cultural intelligence but describe cultural knowledge, multicultural experiences, and cross-cultural adaptation. In my thinking, cultural intelligence is more a competency or even a literacy since they describe my ability to navigate foreign environments e.g. using a tuktuk to get to Khaosan Road in Bangkok; how I control my biases e.g. no I won’t eat that scorpion; or how I demonstrate knowledge of a culture e.g. I will bow, not shake your hand. I’m not sure these are specific skills, fluencies, aptitudes, competencies, or intelligences. How would these be scored on measures of my CQ in the areas of metacognitive, cognitive, motivational, and behavioural (Rachmawaty, Wello, Akil, & Dollah, 2018)? Isn’t cultural intelligence an outward demonstration of g intelligence, verbal/linguistic, and mathematical intelligences as described by Willingham (2009)?

To answer your other questions, I would highly recommend the use of social media and technologies to open the world to the classroom. There are so many engaging and meaningful ways teachers and students can learn from cultures, contexts, people, and events in foreign lands, or even in communities within our own country. I’ve been involved with A Kids Guide to Canada for many years and find it’s one way to open minds and hearts to cultural differences across Canada – student to student. Using video and audio tools, as well as blogs, Twitter and other ‘back channel’ apps, students can see, hear, talk, and text to each other and learn about what it means to live in their unique place in Canada – see the write up about the Great Lakes session that I helped set up for the students (https://akgtcanada.com/kidsmeet-great-lakes/). I can’t be sure it’s going to increase cultural intelligence, but it will certainly improve awareness and fluencies in communicating with other people.

References

Hu, S., Gu, J., Liu, H., & Huang, Q. (2017). The moderating role of social media usage in the relationship among multicultural experiences, cultural intelligence, and individual creativity. Information Technology & People, 30(2), 265-281.

Intelligence. (2009). In Wallace, S. (Ed.), A Dictionary of Education. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 18 Nov. 2018, from http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.lakeheadu.ca/view/10.1093/acref/9780199212064.001.0001/acref-9780199212064-e-497.

Rachmawaty, N., Wello, M. B., Akil, M., & Dollah, S. (2018) Do cultural intelligence and language learning strategies influence students’ English language proficiency. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 9(3), 655-663. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0903.27

Villagran, M. A. (2018). Cultural intelligence: Ability to adapt to new cultural settings. Knowledge Quest, 46(5), 8-14.