Digital Mathematics Storytelling with Recently Migrated Youth (Poster 1)

• In Event: Decolonizing Mathematics Education Through Storytelling: A Tool for Exploring Identity, Justice, and Community

Abstract

Digital Mathematics Storytelling (DMST) is an innovative educational approach that leverages the power of storytelling to connect mathematics with community, cultural, and family identities. Through this method, educators help youth and teachers develop critical digital media literacy, addressing the educational and societal impacts of digital media as well as fostering mathematical exploration. This poster presents the ways that a DMST workshop for youth who have recently migrated to the U.S. (voluntarily and involuntarily) opened up space for the exploration of mathematics, digital, and cultural identities and literacies as connected to the ongoing aftereffects of colonization.
Storytelling is fundamental to human culture, a medium for passing down knowledge, traditions, and values across generations. The original culturally sustaining pedagogy, storytelling opens up space for youth voice and agency, particularly for those within marginalized communities. In education, storytelling decolonizes practices by centering community and family knowledge rather than continually relying on external, Eurocentric epistemologies. And in mathematics, storytelling enables learners to relate mathematical concepts to their lived experiences, making learning more meaningful and relatable.
However, the popularity of modern digital and social media has disrupted traditional storytelling. While many of the voices on YouTube and TikTok center diverse influencers and storytellers, these mediums still impose Western narrative structures and capitalistic motives that overshadow diverse cultural narratives. The dominance of these narratives alienate youth from their cultural storytelling roots and promote passive consumption over active engagement.
Identities, crucial to the way youth see themselves in the world, are dynamically constructed through storytelling (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Furthermore, counter-storytelling, which challenges dominant narratives and stereotypes, involves those from marginalized communities reclaiming their own narratives and identities (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In particular, using narrative structures from pop-culture, such as superhero narratives, can help youth foster their own counter-storytelling without having to vulnerably center their stories on themselves (Enciso, Krone, & Solange, 2023).
In the Spring of 2024, we enacted a 4-day Digital Mathematics Storytelling workshop to serve 12 migrant youth, aged 8-14 in the Midwestern region of the United States. The youth spent the time creating video or comic superhero mathematics stories, sharing and refining these stories in storycircles, finalizing these stories, and then presenting them at a community screening celebration.
The stories presented centered on the multiple experiences of the youth through their immigrant narratives. For instance, an elementary-aged youth from Southeast Asia made a video in which a superhero fought against bullies who teased and ostracized a child who recently moved to the U.S. In another case, a middle-school-aged youth from Africa crafted a superhero story where supervillians who got superpowers and their direction from a violent, dictator-run military took over the country. Finally, a middle-school-aged youth recntly from Central America crafted a story about a superhero who struggles because nobody talks to or can understand this hero.
To culminate the week, each youth presented their story in an emotional community screening, to not just celebrate their hard work, but to recognize their unique mathematical and storytelling agency.

Authors

• Theodore Chao, California State University - Fullerton

• Ruth Nneoma Oliwe, The Ohio State University

• Angga Hidayat, Universitas Pamulang

• Fuyi Feng, The Ohio State University