Engaging Indonesian Teachers through Digital Mathematics Storytelling: Enhancing Identity and Community Connection (Poster 7)

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

Abstract

This poster explores the use of Digital Mathematics Storytelling (DMST) among Indonesian mathematics teachers to enhance their mathematical identities and integrate community-based mathematical knowledge. Traditional mathematics teaching in Indonesia often marginalizes local knowledge in favor of a Eurocentric perspective. DMST challenges this norm by incorporating community-rooted mathematical narratives into educational settings, thereby enriching teacher identity and fostering a comprehensive understanding and appreciation of mathematics.

Globally, mathematics education tends to emphasize traditional, academically-focused mathematics learning practices, often overlooking the rich mathematical knowledge-sharing practices of non-white communities. This project examined the impact of DMST, a technology-enhanced teaching tool inspired by the ancient practice of storytelling, on mathematics teachers in Indonesia. Through a three-day DMST workshop, pre-service and in-service teachers created short videos (1-5 minutes) that explored their mathematical identities in relation to their family, community, and culture.

In Southeast Asia, academic success in mathematics is often linked to family wealth and access to tutoring rather than the ability to bridge in-school and out-of-school mathematical knowledge. This gap leads students to distance themselves from mathematics and avoid STEM careers. By adopting a funds of knowledge approach and storytelling practices, DMST fosters connections to community histories and inter-generational knowledge sharing. This approach enables teachers from and serving marginalized communities to engage in counter storytelling, confronting negative stereotypes and reshaping their identities around mathematics.


The research team conducted a DMST workshop consisting of three four-hour sessions over a week. Each session included Storycircles, where participants shared and refined their stories through small-group feedback. The final session involved a community screening of the video stories, followed by group discussions on the themes and connections to teacher identity.

The study involved sixteen mathematics teachers enrolled in graduate programs at a large, public teacher education-focused university in Indonesia. Participants ranged from pre-service teachers to those with over 15 years of experience.

Findings indicated that teachers engaged deeply with the concept of counter storytelling. Fourteen out of the sixteen stories included counter narratives related to gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age, and parental status. This experience opened space for teachers to explore their positional identities in mathematics and how these identities influenced their teaching practices. For instance, several stories involved how teachers connected their Muslim faith to their teaching identity, addressing how Muslims are negatively positioned in mainstream society.

Teachers also used the stories to confront damaging stereotypes connected to their identities, such as the expectation for female-identifying teachers to balance family responsibilities with their careers, unlike their male-identifying counterparts. The post-workshop surveys revealed that this DMST process helped teachers connect their mathematics teaching to humanizing practices, allowing them to teach from the heart rather than adhering to a purely technical approach.

The DMST experience demonstrated the global potential of DMST to impact mathematics teaching in environments with a deep history of colonizing pedagogical influences like Indonesia. Through storytelling, teachers were able to bridge personal and professional identities and confront debilitating societal structures within mathematics education, such as neo-colonialism and sexism.

Authors

• Theodore Chao, California State University - Fullerton

• Angga Hidayat, Universitas Pamulang