Crafting cultural intelligence in school mathematics curricula: a paradigm shift in Nepali school education

In this article, we have used a Cultural Project-Based Learning (CPBL) to both challenge the way schooling views the sociocultural existence of the learners and try to transform the way we teach mathematics. CPBL has been taken as an alternative way to empower learners by engaging them in socially and culturally authentic problems and projects in order to understand the mathematics that used to be taught in isolation. Thus, we have raised issues of schooling itself and questioned its neocolonial goal of cultural genocide through education. Likewise, we share here one fieldwork example of how to empower teachers with a critical consciousness for teaching and learning process in an authentic context as well as for excavating vested interests in a way that could empower learners by utilizing their cultural intelligence so that their confidence and self-esteem can be enhanced. However, this is not possible unless teachers are empowered to understand the notion of education as a political act. In this paper, we have described some attempts to fulfill the higher objectives of ethnomathematics that are necessary for the development of harmony, peace, and social justice in Nepal