Mathematical Youth Participatory Action Research and Teaching: Reflection Equals Action in Liberatory Mathematics

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

Abstract

This paper will center the possibilities of youth resistance and transformation in mathematics education by bringing to light tensions of youth participatory action research and mathematics. Cammarota and Fine (2008) make it clear that “[b]y attaining knowledge for resistance and transformation, young people create their sense of efficacy in the world and address the social conditions that impede liberation and positive, healthy development” (p. 10). It is vital that young people in mathematics teaching, learning, and research are provided with the right conditions to empower themselves, help liberate others and enjoy math—while improving the world. A mathematical embodiment of self and social transformation is impossible and will be highlighted as part of a ten-day forty-hour mathematics youth participatory action research (YPAR) EntreMundos summer program. The mathematics-YPAR EntreMundos program will be referred to as Reflection Equals Action with Liberatory Mathematics (REALM) throughout this paper. The YPAR program, REALM from this study situated mathematics as a guiding epistemology, methodology, pedagogy, and research method in partnership with a college pathway program for marginalized students and a Latinx community-based organization. All activities were facilitated by the first author, as they were an active participant-observer. The youth worked in groups or pairs for all activities.
YPAR creates a rich education space for young people to explore societal issues, and throughout this summer program mathematics was introduced to enhance the YPAR experience. Mathematics is epistemologically defined through indigenous cosmologies as a living entity, to further view mathematics as an ontological relationship, foregrounded in an axiology of mathematics being an experience. YPAR EntreMundos and conocimientos then allows for an expansion and development of individual-collective consciousness. The relationship between self, mathematics and others creates a full embodiment of mathematical learning. This paper presents a narrative of the summer YPAR program to highlight the possibilities of mathematical youth participatory action research and teaching (MYPART). Narrative inquiry and context analysis are two methods used with thematic analysis to make meaning of the data. Furthermore, Anzaldúa theory of conocimientos was used an analytic framework to better understand youth data. Conocimientos represents seven stages such that once each stage is experienced it signifies a change or shift in consciousness. This study showed evidenced that MYPART dose lead to a collective change in the consciousness of young people who participated in REALM.
Reflecting on mathematical learning is something that should be done (and, for the most part, is done) in schools. The struggle of mathematics within YPAR is not the reflection but the action. Without action upon the world, YPAR lacks the opportunity to learn, develop agency and empowerment and cannot be considered YPAR. Thus, mathematical action is a necessity for mathematics within YPAR.

Author

• Ricardo Martinez, Pennsylvania State University