Sparking Community Voices to Amplify Mathematical Knowledge

• In Event: Encuentros, Pláticas, y Testimonios for Imagining New Visions of Early Childhood Research

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illuminate how storytelling propagates individuals’ cultural connections and everyday experiences with mathematics. These stories emerge from a group of community members (i.e., parents, paraprofessionals) located in an urban, Title 1 elementary school in the Midwest. Together, we investigate how mathematics underpins important aspects of daily life.
Theoretical Framework
This work draws upon the funds of knowledge (i.e., cultural practices and bodies of knowledge that are a part of families’ daily practices and routines; González et al., 2005) and modalities that vary across languages and cultures (Bender & Beller, 2018). To capture this knowledge, photovoice methodology, (i.e., photographs taken by participants to capture their lived experiences; Kroeger et al., 2004), is leveraged to tell stories, promoting collective sensemaking of experiences that influence everyday life (Bietti et al., 2019).
Methods
This paper focuses on the stories that emerged during a focusing process designed to uncover how participants interacted with numbers in their daily lives. Prior to this process, participants used disposable cameras to take photos of when/how they saw mathematics in their daily lives and then symbolically represented how they saw mathematics in three-to-five of their favorite photos. These photos and representations were collected, and the focusing process was video recorded and transcribed.

Analysis followed four stages (Tsang, 2020), where (a) the authors coded the photographs, (b) the participants shared their stories about the photographs, (c) a cross-comparison dialogue between the two interpretations was constructed, and (d) a visual and narrative representation of individuals’ cultural connections and everyday experiences with mathematics was developed.
Results
Analysis identified rich connections between community members' daily life and mathematics. Among these themes were cooking, games, economics, travel, and measurement. Although these were not surprising, of interest were the stories that emerged as photos were shared. For example, Krishika's favorite photo was of her daughter using an abacus to make calculations (see Figure 1). As participants engaged with the photo Desiree noticed “there’s a lot of problems, and I didn’t know if they were checking or doing … is it add, subtract, or multiply, I can’t say”, while Daniela stated, “there are five rows of 15 columns…I wonder why it is five deep and 10 in a row.” From here, Krishika told stories about how her family used the abacus and the importance of her daughter learning to calculate numbers using the tool.

While this story illustrates cultural connections to mathematics, the significance of collective sensemaking of experiences influencing everyday life should not be underestimated. As Desiree exclaimed at the end of the session, “I don’t know why we haven’t sat down before and had these kinds of conversations about our cultures and backgrounds”!
Scholarly Significance
Photovoice is a participatory research methodology that celebrates the stories of community members' cultural connections to mathematics in ways that can lead to meaningful change to mathematics curriculum and pedagogy. Next steps of this project include the integration of these themes into daily math talks so that lived realities of students are honored.

Author

• Dawn Woods, Oakland University