A Meme-ingful Way to Collectively Analyze Mathematical Cultural Beliefs

• In Event: Social Media Sensemaking Within and Across Cultures

Abstract

Social media connects the world to ideas, beliefs, and different perspectives (Walker, 2012) and enables us to have conversations that connect “politics, personal experiences, and public life to larger issues” (Giroux, 2002, p. 7). As people navigate social media platforms, they encounter a variety of mathematical messages, including unsympathetic ones, that can reinforce unproductive cultural beliefs which can include beliefs about mathematics (Barak, 2007; Green et al., 2004). Thus, it is important that the mathematics education community begin to analyze, decipher, and scrutinize the societal curriculum of mathematics on social media (Author, 2022) and this paper presents ideas on how we, the mathematics education community, can and plan to do so systematically.

Authors

• K. Elizabeth Hammonds, Auburn University

• Gregory Benoit, Boston University

• Gregory Beaudine, University of Iowa