(Re)Storying Our Mathematics Identity through Comics: Nigerian Girls’ Narratives in a Transnational Study

• In Event: Global Perspectives on Digital Storytelling for Identity, Justice, and Community

Abstract

This study draws from a transnational study examining how Black girls express their mathematics identity and agency through multimodal storytelling, focusing specifically on middle school girls in Western Nigeria. Despite growing attention to equity in mathematics education, African girls, particularly those from non-Western contexts, remain significantly underrepresented in scholarship addressing Black girlhood, mathematics identity formation, agency, and community-responsive pedagogies. This study directly addresses this gap by examining how Nigerian girls engaged in a storytelling-centered program, (Re)Storying Our Mathematics Identity through Comics (ROMIC), utilize narrative and comics storytelling to critically reflect on their lived experiences, articulate their relationships with mathematics, position themselves as mathematical thinkers and doers, and envision their future aspirations.
In this work, I conceptualize (re)storying as a reflective and transformative process through which Black girls narrate, challenge, and reimagine their positions within mathematics education, explicitly resisting dominant deficit narratives that marginalize their experiences and capacities. Comics storytelling in mathematics education is defined in my study as a multimodal narrative method employing visual imagery, textual dialogue, gestures, and spatial arrangements to convey mathematical thinking and personal narratives. This approach actively engages readers, inviting connections to their own experiences, perspectives, and knowledge, thus promoting rich mathematical dialogues.
The study centers on middle school-aged Black girls, recognizing this developmental stage as critical for shaping long-term mathematics identity. Through semi-structured activities such as reflective journaling, story circles, community photo documentation, and comics creation, participants explored their personal, cultural, and mathematical experiences, articulating their perceptions of mathematics, problem-solving strategies, and envisioning their futures within the field. Although ROMIC operates transnationally in both Nigeria and the United States, this study specifically foregrounds Nigerian data, intentionally amplifying the voices of girls who are frequently excluded from global mathematics education discourse.
Grounded in Black girlhood theories (Brown, 2009; Halliday, 2019; Fields & Simmons, 2022), robust mathematics identity frameworks (Aguirre et al., 2013; Joseph, 2022), transformative agency (Stetsenko, 2019), multimodality (Kress, 2010; The New London Group, 1996), rehumanizing (Gutiérrez, 2018), and community-responsive pedagogies (Tintiangco-Cubales & Duncan-Andrade, 2021). In this study, I share how Nigerian girls experienced and valued their participation in the ROMIC program and what ways the program’s storytelling, comics-based, and collaborative activities created spaces for them to (re)story mathematics identity, connect mathematical knowledge to their lived experiences, and express their mathematical agency.
Employing a qualitative multi-case study design informed by multimodal narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Vasudevan et al., 2010) and Black Feminist Qualitative Inquiry (Evans-Winters, 2019), data include participant journals, audio-recorded story circles, community photographs, student-created comics, and interviews. From engaging in constant-comparative (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) and Serafini’s multimodal analysis (Serafini, 2010) analysis, preliminary findings indicate comics served as critical artifacts through which participants resisted deficit-based framings of African learners, asserted their undervalued creative identities, highlighted community relationships, articulated educational barriers, and positioned themselves as proactive community problem-solvers. Ultimately, this research advocates for the celebration of Black girls’ mathematical brilliance, creativity, and agency within the U.S. and transnationally.

Author

• Ruth Nneoma Oliwe, The Ohio State University