Mathematics, critical literacy, and youth participatory action research

This article examines mathematics education as both the site and object of transformation for a youth PAR project in which students researched and evaluated their urban high school in Oakland, California. These youth researchers were trained as part of a sociology course as well as a mathematics class designed to both remediate gaps in math preparation and accelerate students into higher-order math literacy. This study differs from and extends other studies that describe mathematics as a tool for social critique. It considers youth research in and through mathematics as a more ideologically open endeavor in that youth do not simply reproduce predetermined criticisms of social inequality. Thus, this project translates extensive work in critical literacy, new media literacy, and youth participatory action research to a mathematics context.