I’m W.O.K.E.—Widening Options Through Knowledge and Empowerment: Mathematical Opportunities of Knowledgeable Enactment

• In Event: We Will Rise Up for Youth and Mathematical Youth Participatory Action Research

Abstract

The I’m W.O.K.E.—Widening Options through Knowledge and Empowerment in the Clayton County School District in Southwest Atlanta created space for youth leadership when launching a two-week summer camp. The summer camp centers youth mathematical knowledge and agency as they learned to teach middle school mathematics content through games, co-designed a culturally relevant mathematics curriculum, and were positioned as lead decision-makers for the effective mathematics instruction of their peers. W.O.K.E. provides a prime example to discuss the tension of youth participatory action research (YPAR) relationships and realities. In the session, we will center on authentic community relationships because, without them, YPAR falls short of its critical intent. Earlier, when realities were invoked, it was used to grapple with the tensions of define community engagement as YPAR or not-YPAR. The W.O.K.E. summer program is an exemplary example of organic YPAR in motion. What manifested in W.O.K.E is a critical lens (epistemology), a structure (method & methodology) foregrounded on relationships, and a playground for youth people to learn through teaching (pedagogy). W.O.K.E. was not intended to be a Math YPAR program, yet it organically embodies the YPAR epistemology, methods, methodology, and pedagogy.
This paper reports on the experiences of four young people over three years of W.O.K.E engagement which centered on mathematical knowledge production coming from youth and their communities from the perspective of one of their YPAR adult facilitators. The intent of reflecting on how on four youth, Amarii, Anna, Sharif, and Shirin experienced math teaching a curriculum development is to focus on the relational aspects of adult-youth YPAR members. The relationship between researchers and the community (that they are lucky to work in) is vital to ensure YPAR work is critically and ethnically connected. This paper will report on the following:
• The role of relationships between adults and youth, and adults and the local community when engaging young people in critical mathematics.
• The tensions of what is and is not YPAR in discussing how any critical engagement with youth has to potentially to be YPAR;
• How YPAR can be a barrier to meeting the needs of young people and their community.
W.O.K.E. is a space where young people embrace mathematics as it impacts aspects of their lives. The implications of this work inform how other researchers understand math YPAR and youth lead near-peer mathematics instruction.

Author

• Brian R. Lawler, Kennesaw State University