Re-authoring Mathematics Narratives Through a Participatory Approach

Attending to Black youths’ joy and emotional wellbeing has been shown to help positively shape their mathematics identities. The study described here provides a rationale for a participatory study that investigated the relationship between joy and the construction of mathematics identities through re-authoring. Through the intentional collaborative design, the participatory group in this study cultivated a space where they felt comfortable conceptualizing how Black joy persists in mathematics classrooms despite systemic barriers and pervasive anti-Blackness. Providing a rationale for the participatory decisions made during the study aims to build upon extant literature on participatory identity work in mathematics education.