In this essay, I draw on the composite narrative I developed through my work with four Sub-Saharan African (SSA) young women (Mendrika, Manyoni, Njo, and Sanyu)[1] on a project focused on co-exploring social issues and Critical Mathematics Education (CME). CME recognizes that mathematics, mathematics learning, and mathematics teaching are all political.[2] One way to counter this has been using mathematics as a space to discuss and analyze social justice issues.[3] The goal of the larger project, which included one SSA young man (Soro), was therefore to explore how they envisioned CME within a SSA context using participatory approaches. The SSA youth came from The Gambia, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Uganda, and Cote d’Ivoire though were physically located in the mid-Western United States. In designing this study, I was clear in my commitment to African decolonizing approaches including Ubuntu[4] and Sankofa[5] to research and so co-created the research goals and the space with the youth. The group met for 12 weeks for about two hours each week to investigate social issues with simultaneously theorizing the goal of CME in an African context.
For this essay, I share the ways Mendrika, Manyoni, Njo, and Sanya describe their experiences learning mathematics as SSA young women. Rebecca Willis[6] describes composite narratives as a way to combine individual stories into one to show their interconnectedness. Further, composite narratives Ubuntu, the Southern African philosophy, describes uplifting and centering the collective, thus providing an African-centred understanding of research as relational, collective, and co-constructed. I chose to display this narrative in this way as it also calls to the way Ubuntu can be infused in the writing of this research. Like Willis, “in the narrative itself, I avoid imposing any judgement on the interviewees’ [participants] experiences and opinions, and do not assume motivations or feelings.”[7] Furthermore, while some of the word choices or tenses might appear strange, note that I am intentional in keeping the integrity of the narratives as they were spoken in our sessions.
The composite narrative draws on the voices of Mendrika, Sanyu, Njo, and Manyoni’s who describe mathematics and broadly STEM spaces as gendered spaces. Their reflections illuminate how gender shapes mathematics learning environments. This narrative is especially relevant to youth as agents of feminist change and activism: they speak with clarity and conviction in analyzing false narratives of exclusion and use counter-stories to challenge them. Njo facilitated the session by inviting everyone to reflect on their educational journeys broadly, and on mathematics in particular. In an earlier discussion, Njo and Manyoni had offered vivid, beautiful descriptions of their perception of a [Black] African woman while also highlighting her central role in African society. They spoke with joy, admiration, and gratitude for the strength of African women in their communities. Yet this joy shifted noticeably when the conversation turned to mathematics. Although Njo’s initial prompt emphasized education in general, the discussion soon revealed how deeply gendered schooling is in their societies, with mathematics classrooms serving as a particular focal point.
Our Composite Narratives about our African Math Experiences
Telling a story about my mathematics experience would be incomplete without beginning with my education journey generally. As a young girl, I had to find my own reason to stay in school. I had to be stubborn to hold on to that reason to stay in school because usually you do not have any resources that will motivate you to do well in school. I did not have teachers that would encourage me as a girl who would say “oh, you should keep up what you’re doing”. I didn’t! It hurt because the focus was always on the boys. I remember that even the teacher who was perceived to be the best was usually assigned to the class with the majority boys.
And this was far worse in mathematics and other STEM classes. Maths class was certainly never one of those reasons for me to stay in school. Maths class, in my view, was a space totally colonized by boys in terms of how to do well in it. I think I found myself in the most social science courses when I was in the lower grades like grades five or six. I was attracted to subject areas that allowed me to talk and express myself. Those subjects also helped me overcome the social pressure related to girls and how our smartness was perceived. Later on, when I told my mum I wanted to study biology, chemistry, and maths, she was so quick to allow me to do what I wanted as long as it was science and even began telling her friends because it was STEM. In fact, I was failing maths but it did not even matter. I was enrolled in maths and that’s what mattered.
I had a [male] maths teacher who decided to “prove”, using logic, that “a woman is equal to a problem.” I really wish I was lying. He followed a series of steps and “proved this”. I told myself that I was going to try really, really hard to show him that women actually can do something. My maths and physics teachers were men and I just feel like I was never empowered as a young girl in those classes so it was no surprise to me that I failed both subjects. But I knew I was not dumb. I refused to believe that lie. And you know what, my chemistry teacher was a woman and even though I was not doing well earlier on, I would go to office hours. Something about the way she treated me was empowering and I ended up being the top of the class in chemistry. Unfortunately, my mathematics experience was not like this. I felt like, in maths, teachers were more prone to go with boys, because they felt like it’s more guarantee that they were going to understand it.
I tried. I tried to befriend my maths teacher and the boys in my class. I would go along with the boys to see our teacher, but they would all look at me like I didn’t belong. I mean they would imply that I was not going to be able to do anything with the [maths] problems. I was always told that education was the key to success, but they forgot to tell me what kind of education. Because I was doing well in other subjects but those did not count if it wasn’t maths. So not all education is the key to success. And it kind of crippled me for the longest time, because every time I failed a class, I was like, oh my god, I’m unsuccessful! Oh, my god, that’s it for me! Like, I have no place in the world. We forget that there’s different types of intellect, especially for us Africans. I feel like most Africans are artists. We sing, tell stories, act, you know, people do these things, but all those things are looked down upon.
Because “education is the key to success”
“Particular education”
“Maths”
Notes
[1] All names are pseudonyms. For more information on the project, see Oyemolade Osibodu, “Researcher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense: Engaging African Decolonial Practices in a Critical Mathematics Education Project,” in Facilitating Community Research for Social Change: Case Studies in Qualitative, Arts-Based, and Visual Research, ed.Casey Burkholder, Funke Aladejebi, & Joshua Schwab-Cartas (New York: Routledge, 2022): 48-62.
[2] See Danny Bernard Martin, Maisie L. Gholson, & Jacqueline Leonard, “Mathematics as Gatekeeper: Power and Privilege in the Production of Knowledge, Journal of Urban Mathematics Education 3, no. 2 (2010): 12-24; and Oyemolade Osibodu, “Necessitating Teacher Learning in Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice to Counter Anti-Black Racism,” For the Learning of Mathematics 41, no. 1 (2021): 18-20.
[3] Erika C. Bullock, “Intersectional Analysis in Critical Mathematics Education Research: A Response to Figure Hiding,” Review of Research in Education 42, no. 1 (2018): 122-145; Eric “Rico” Gutstein, ““Our Issues, Our People—Math as our Weapon”: Critical Mathematics in a Chicago Neighborhood High School,” Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 47, no. 5 (2016): 454-504; Kari Kokka, “Radical STEM Teacher Activism: Collaborative Organizing to Sustain Social Justice Pedagogy in STEM Fields,” Educational Foundations 31, no. 1-2 (2018): 86-114.
[4] For more on Ubuntu, see Ali A. Abdi, “The Humanist African Philosophy of Ubuntu: Anti-colonial Historical and Educational Analyses,” in Re-visioning Education in Africa: Ubuntu-inspired Education for Humanity, ed. Emefa J. Takyi-Amoako & N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba (New York: Springer International Publishing, 2018): 19-34; Dalene M. Swanson, “Ubuntu: An African Contribution to (Re)search for/with a ‘Humble Togetherness,’” Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education 2, no. 2 (2007): 53–67.
[5] For more on Sankofa, see Christel N. Temple, “The Emergence of Sankofa Practice in the United States: A Modern History,” Journal of Black Studies 42, no. 1 (2010): 127-150.
[6] Rebecca Willis, “The Use of Composite Narratives to Present Interview Findings,” Qualitative Research 19, no. 4 (2019): 471-480.
[7] Willis, “The Use of Composite Narratives,” 475.
Author Biography
Dr. Molade Osibodu’s (York University) research interrogates the enduring impacts of coloniality in [math] education, with a focus on the lived experiences of Black youth and educators in both Canada and Sub-Saharan Africa. Grounded in decolonial frameworks, Black geographies, and participatory research methodologies, her scholarship explores how mathematics curriculum, policy, and pedagogy are shaped by Eurocentric and racialized structures. Osibodu’s work spans three intersecting lines of inquiry: the experiences of Black youth in mathematics classrooms, the colonial foundations of curriculum including international education curricula, and the influence of popular culture on perceptions of mathematical belonging. Her recent projects, such as Envisioning Diasporic Mathematics Literacies and Critical Financial Literacy, offer critical insights into how Black learners navigate and reimagine mathematics education. She has shared findings with major stakeholders, including the Toronto District School Board and the Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association, and has published in leading journals such as Educational Studies in Mathematics, Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, and the Comparative Education Review. Her research has been well-funded including by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada.