“New African” or “Old African”: Storylines of African Immigrant Parents’ Evolving Perspectives and Experiences of Their Children’s Mathematics Learning

Abstract

Using theories of Afrocentricity (African Indigenous Knowledge) and of positioning, we investigated how Sub-Saharan African immigrant parents (SSAIP) support their Grade 6–9 children’s mathematics learning in Canada. Individual interviews were collected from twelve immigrant parents living in an urban community in Alberta and new to Canada (within five years). We ask: what are the mathematics experiences and perspectives of Sub-Saharan African immigrant families? We analyzed interview data from 12 SSAIPs from Greater Edmonton, Canada to identify the storylines they shared regarding their experiences and perspectives of mathematics learning. The prevailing storylines were interpreted through an African Indigenous Knowledge lens. We found that parents adjust their mathematics learning support for their children by negotiating their experiences from two cultural worlds of education: pre-colonial (African Indigenous Knowledge) and colonized worldviews, their home and host cultures, generally. We identified these storylines, some of which sit in tension with each other: “mathematics learning is a communal responsibility”, “mathematics teachers share responsibility for the moral upbringing of the child”, “mathematics as memory work is feared and stressful”, “adults tell children what to do”, “adults negotiate with children about what to do”, and “success in mathematics is a gift from God”. We interpreted the storylines through the Akan Adinkra epistemologies which manifest in the Adinkra symbols and sayings, and through our experiences living and working in Sub-Saharan Africa, to determine the way each storyline aligned with old African or new African ways. This study will be beneficial for educators wishing to adopt culturally responsive ways of engaging immigrant families in their children’s mathematics learning.

1. Background

In this study, we investigated the mathematics learning experiences of Sub-Saharan African immigrant parents (SSAIPs) 0–5 years after immigration. We interviewed parents in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to learn from them their experiences of their children’s mathematics learning in Canada. In analysis, we identified storylines that elucidate the experiences of the newly migrated parents, focusing on how they draw on two cultural worlds—experiences prior to and after migration—to support their children’s mathematics learning.

One out of seven Black people in Canada lives in the Prairies (which includes Alberta)—i.e., nearly 175,000 out of the 1.2 million people who identified as Black. With a population of nearly 129,390 people, the province of Alberta has the highest Black growth rate (49.3%) in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2019). Undoubtedly, the Black population’s demography significantly impacts schooling, education, and programs, particularly in STEM and mathematics education. We argue that to foster an inclusive education that acknowledges diverse ways of knowing, there is the need to pay attention to the unique cultural experiences of immigrants, and how educators could harness these experiences to benefit children’s mathematics learning. Gorgorió and Planas’ (2005) work has pointed out immigrants’ experience of change and living “discontinuities between cultures; in particular, discontinuities between different school cultures” (p. 93). The discontinuities provide a premise for studies that seek to better understand how immigrants respond to such cultural differences and how they might leverage their assets and cultural capital to overcome, or compensate for, these discontinuities in the host country.

Although Sub-Saharan African immigrants1 are unique in their cultural experiences, their potential contribution to their children’s mathematics learning are mostly absorbed into categories of other minorities (Yaro & Wagner, 2026). We follow prior scholars in the field to posit that African immigrant families and communities carry a wealth of knowledge about their children’s mathematics learning experiences in Canadian contexts, and this positions them uniquely to foster their children’s mathematics learning and identity formation (Cunningham, 2021; Yaro & Wagner, 2026). Drawing on an African Indigenous lens and storylines (an aspect of positioning theory), our study is guided by two interrelated questions: What storylines do Sub-Saharan African immigrant parents use to make sense of their prior and post-migration experiences of their children’s mathematics learning? How might these experiences be interpreted through African Indigenous Knowledge?

2. Literature Review

The socio-cultural backgrounds in which parents were raised and educated are critical in informing their perspectives on their children’s mathematics learning and involvement practices (A. Anderson et al., 2016). Such parental cultural background and schooling experiences are what have been extensively documented by scholars in education research as “cultural models of education” (J. Anderson et al., 2017; Crafter, 2012; Fryberg & Markus, 2007; Reese & Gallimore, 2000). Cultural models, largely drawn from Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital (see Bourdieu, 1990), are the assumptions or beliefs, patterns of ideas and practices relevant to education that are derived from past experiences and that mediate and regulate people’s perceptions and behaviour—“what is valued and ideal, what activities should be enacted and avoided, who should participate and the rules of interaction” (Reese & Gallimore, 2000, p. 106). These cultural models are so familiar, invisible, and taken for granted that they are only recognized when one finds oneself in a remarkably different socio-cultural context.

In mathematics education, cultural models of mathematics learning emanating from parents’ own prior educational experiences, major curriculum reforms since parents’ own schooling experiences, and the introduction of multiple mathematics strategies in the new schooling context (De Abreu & Cline, 2005) shape parents’ and students’ understanding of mathematics. Differing views of what counts as mathematics, and the school’s normative expectations from parents (De Abreu et al., 2002; Gorgorió & de Abreu, 2009), have also been associated with how mathematics is conceptualized in “the home” which in many cases differs from the school mathematics or expectations (Meaney & Lange, 2013). For instance, Civil et al. (2005) illustrated how immigrant parents’ cultural models of mathematics education influenced their beliefs about the mathematics algorithms that their children were currently learning. With diverse immigrant parents from Tucson (United States) and Barcelona (Spain), Civil et al. (2005) described parents’ awareness of the differences between their mathematics experience in their home countries (before) and what they were experiencing in the United States and Spain (now). Marisol, one of the participants in the study, described differences between a mathematics algorithm for division. She had opted to teach her son how she learned division in Mexico by performing some of the operations mentally without writing them down. She thought her son’s teacher’s approach to the division was “too slow, messy and inefficient” (Civil et al., 2005, p. 275). Similarly, Colegrove and Krause (2017) described how a cultural gap affected the pedagogical approaches Latino parents were using to support their children at home: the Latino immigrant parents were often frustrated and confused by the teacher’s expectation that children needed to describe their process of solving mathematics problems or show multiple strategies of solving a problem. The parents in Civil et al.’s (2005) work described such a “demand as complicating things” (p. 196). We anticipated Sub-Saharan African immigrant parents sharing similar cultural dissonance experiences in supporting their children’s mathematics learning at home.

González (1996) earlier argued for “re-conceptualizing households, not as the source of barriers to educational attainment, but as repositories of resources that can be strategically tapped for the betterment of children’s learning” (p. 3). Since knowledge cannot be constructed in a social and cultural vacuum, family knowledge and resources are both situated in cultural and social spheres. Hence, we posit that Sub-Saharan African immigrant families’ cultural model of mathematics education, including their lived experiences and perspectives, are rooted in their cultures as practiced in their home country, and one would anticipate that they would bring these experiences to their host country and utilize them in supporting their children’s mathematics learning (see Yaro, 2021; Yaro & Wagner, 2026). However, this might not be the case for every African immigrant. In other words, they may either engage in total or partial utilization of their previous cultural experiences in supporting their children’s mathematics learning in the new cultural context. Likewise, we acknowledge that there will be differences in cultural experiences across families despite all being African. Moreover, there is also a possibility of immigrants’ practices changing over time as they encounter new realities. Our contribution in this paper nonetheless is to theorize African immigrant parents’ prior and post-immigration experiences of their children’s mathematics learning from an African Indigenous lens.

New Africa or Old Africa: (Re)positioning Indigenous Knowledge Beyond European Colonialism

Indigenous Knowledge (IK) refers to the unique, localized knowledge systems developed by communities over generations through direct engagement with their environment and social life (Shizha, 2010; Seroto & Higgs, 2024). These systems include oral traditions, proverbs, storytelling, rituals, ecological stewardship, and apprenticeship-based learning—practices that reflect deeply embedded values, cosmologies, and ways of knowing. In this study, old Africa refers to parenting and educational practices rooted in African Indigenous Knowledge, such as wisdom drawn from Adinkra symbols, moral folktales, wise sayings, and parent-guided instruction centred on communal responsibility. By contrast, new Africa describes practices shaped by Western ideologies, including those encountered by African immigrants in diaspora contexts like Canada (e.g., prioritizing child autonomy, the negotiation of household rules, and individual choice) and colonial school structures in Africa (e.g., rote learning). The new or old Africa framing, which emerged during our collaborative coding process, served as an interpretive tool to understand how parents blend and navigate these paradigms in supporting their children’s mathematics learning. It is tempting to assume that old African ways are positive and colonized ways or new African ways are negative, but we want to draw readers’ attention to ways in which Sub-Saharan African immigrant families leverage both practices from two cultural worlds to foster their children’s mathematics learning in Canada. Is the fact that African people adopt new ways an endorsement of those ways? Or is it caving to colonialist powers/gatekeeping? Or can it be both in some ways? Indeed, Seroto and Higgs (2024), while advocating for a decolonial turn in Africa’s education system that reclaims and integrates African Indigenous Knowledge, argued that such reclamation should not sideline Western forms of knowledge but should rather seek to integrate the best of both African Indigenous Knowledges and Western forms of knowledge. Similarly, Mosweunyane (2013) and Shizha (2010) asserted, the continuous negotiation between Indigenous and Western knowledge systems actively redefines African identities and educational experiences across both temporal and geographic boundaries. Any dynamic knowledge system includes ways of incorporating new ideas.

We adopt the new or old Africa framing, not to refer to pre- or post-colonial Africa because we acknowledge that African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) transcends pre-colonial and colonial or post-colonial eras. We agree with Taiwo (2010) that organizing African history solely in relation to European colonialism tends to obscure this complexity. It often assumes that colonialism began with European intervention after the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference, overlooking earlier forms of intra-African imperialism and localized statecraft (Taiwo, 2010). For instance, by the nineteenth century, coastal Ghana was home to diverse, cosmopolitan communities inhabited by Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans, engaging in multilingual commerce and shaping a Pidgin language for trade (Taiwo, 2010). Likewise, the Fulani empire builders of the eighteenth century adopted Hausa as a lingua franca while maintaining political dominance into the twenty-first century in parts of northern Nigeria—where some still view themselves as subjects of Fulani colonization. These examples challenge any essentialized vision of a “pure” or “uncontaminated” pre-colonial Africa.

As Mosweunyane (2013) affirmed, Indigenous educational systems were dynamic and responsive, continuously shaped by context, collective agency, and the wisdom of elders, together influencing how children are raised and various parental involvement practices in and out of school contexts. We claim that SSAIPs do not merely inherit or abandon African traditions but rather carry them to their host country and creatively reconfigure them, merging the communal ethos of old Africa with the adaptive, rights-oriented values of new Africa. In doing so, they exercise agency in shaping their children’s educational experiences, particularly in the various ways they engage in their children’s mathematics learning in the host country (Yaro & Wagner, 2026). Their efforts defy rigid binaries and exemplify how Indigenous Knowledge continues to evolve—dynamic, contested, and resilient across historical ruptures and global movements.

3. Our Positioning and Positionality

Our positionalities are largely shaped by our critical work and personal lived experiences—living and working in Sub-Saharan Africa, crossing national/cultural boundaries. Kwesi (the first author), originally from Ghana, grew up and taught mathematics in his home country, and has lived and worked in Canada for almost a decade. As an African immigrant, his experiences resonate with the participants in this study navigating educational and cultural transitions. Like the participants, Kwesi is interested in how he might better support his children’s mathematics learning in new cultural contexts like Canada. Dave (the second author) grew up and taught mathematics in Canada, lived and taught mathematics for almost three years in eSwatini, and has since been back working in Canada for 25 years. Together, our cross-cultural experiences enriched how we interacted with the participants, and made sense of their experiences as shared in the data.

4. Theoretical Frameworks: African Indigenous Knowledges, Positioning, and Storylines

4.1. African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK)

In this study, we employ tenets of African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) in interpreting Sub-Saharan African immigrant parents’ (SSAIP) prior and post-migratory experiences and perspectives of their children’s mathematics learning. In this paper we use the phrase African Indigenous Knowledge to refer to Sub-Saharan African ways of knowing and being. We acknowledge the diversity in ways of knowing within Sub-Saharan Africa; however, within these diversities are commonalities of values and belief systems even though they are expressed and communicated differently in terms of language (e.g., proverbs, wise sayings), art (e.g., traditional symbols like Adinkra among the Akan ethnic group in Ghana), and other forms of literary works across the Sub-Saharan region. Within the common traits across African cultures, one can find some degree of variance. When conducting research with African immigrants from different countries, it is expected that there will be both similarities and differences in their experiences as a result of their encounter with a new culture, such as how each parent is negotiating their cultural transitions, and how they have adjusted or are adjusting to the Canadian culture and school system.

Epistemologically, one of the key characteristics of the African Indigenous Knowledge system is its holistic nature, consisting of interconnectedness of the living and non-living in community with one another. The individual is a non-existent being without the community or the collective society. Karenga (1997) described “personhood from an African perspective as a process of becoming rather than a simple state of being”. For Menkiti (1984), to be fully human in the African sense is not by “existence but by successive stages of integration in the community” (p. 37). The community has the responsibility to ensure the well-being of the individual. On the other hand, the individual in the community has the responsibility to ensure the continued survival of the community by taking up responsibilities and roles that will ensure the benefit of the community.

The communal and social nature valued by Africans is eloquently expressed by the famous African Nobel laureate in literature, Chinua Achebe. Achebe (1994) wrote:

A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground, it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so (p. 60).

Again, Achebe’s assertion of togetherness and care for others in the community resonates with a popular story of a Western anthropologist who visited an Indigenous community in South Africa. The anthropologist decided to study the social behaviour of the children. The researcher proposed a simple game, and the children were interested in partaking. He placed a basket full of fruits under a big tree and told the children that whoever gets there first would win the entire basket full of fruits for him/herself. He lined up the children and blew his whistle to signal a start. Interestingly, the children held each other’s hand and ran together for the basket, and sat in a big circle, and enjoyed the fruits together. This surprised the anthropologist. So, he asked them why they waited for each other instead of one person enjoying the fruits. The children smiled and replied, “Ubuntu, how can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?” These and other stories demonstrate the value placed on a sense of community and sharing among African people. The sense of community also shapes how learning takes place—a communal endeavour, intergenerational in nature, and shared among community members (Obiora & Emeka, 2015).

An African Indigenous approach to knowledge is also evident in language, creation stories, proverbs, folklores, artworks/traditional symbols and other oral traditions (Asante, 1990; Osibodu & Yaro, 2023; Oyebade, 1990; Verharen, 2002). For instance, the Akan Adinkra, a collection of patterns and symbols originated from the Akan tribe found in West Africa (Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire), symbolize the richness of Akan culture and serve as a means for communicating and educating the philosophical thoughts and values of Akan people (Yaro & Wagner, 2026). There is a plethora of Adinkra symbols, each portraying different meaning and cultural significance. For instance, Gye Nyame, one of the widely used Adinkra symbols in Ghana, translates literally to mean “except God”, a means of expressing the omnipotence of God—an indication of Akans’ belief in God and spirituality. The belief in supernatural beings may shape how SSAIPs perceive their own mathematics ability and how they ascribe their children’s success in mathematics learning (Yaro & Wagner, 2026). Another example is Nkonsonkonson, an Adinkra symbol for unity and human relations (Osibodu & Yaro, 2023). We have provided examples of Adinkra symbols and their meaning in Table 1.

Table 1. Adinkra Symbols and their meaning (image source: https://www.adinkrasymbols.org/).

#	Symbol	Name	Meaning
1		Gye Nyame	Except God. A symbol expressing the omnipotence of God. Probably the most popular Adinkra symbol in Ghana.
2		Sankofa	Go back and get it! A symbol of the wisdom of learning from the past to build for the future.
3		Akoko Nan	Nurturing coupled with discipline
4		Nkonsonkonson	Unity and community

We argue that Sub-Saharan African students’ experiences of mathematics learning could better be understood through acknowledging the importance of their ways of knowing and being. By employing AIK concepts including key Adinkra symbols as a theoretical lens, we account for the extent to which cultural values and beliefs rooted in African epistemology might shape Sub-Saharan African immigrant parents’ pre- and post-migratory experiences of their children’s mathematics learning. For instance, the value of respect for elders and authority figures, apprenticeship as a parenting strategy, communal living, and societal moral values may influence how African immigrant parents may interact and engage with the school, administrators and teachers (G. Dei, 2000).

4.2. Positioning Theory and Storylines

G. Dei (1996) argued for the need for African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) to cultivate alliances with other theories for a more progressive scholarship on diasporic and continental Africa. Against this backdrop, we draw on the concept of storylines, an aspect of positioning theory to inform the storylines we report in this paper. Positioning theory indicates that people interpret their experience through known storylines, which are “lived stories for which told stories already exist” (Harré, 2012, p. 198). Positioning theory examines the social dynamics of interactions by analyzing the rights, obligations, and moral orders that shape the nature of individuals’ speaking and acting (Wagner & Herbel-Eisenmann, 2009). Not everyone has equal access to these rights and duties due to the power dynamics inherent in social interactions. In positioning theory, conversations are viewed as structured sets of speech acts, and the meaning of words or actions is determined in relation to the joint action among participants which produce storylines (Davies & Harré, 1999). Storylines and positions are key concepts in positioning theory.

Storylines refer to ongoing repertoires that guide interactions, relying on cultural resources and conventions to make sense of events (Herbel-Eisenmann et al., 2015). Positions are complex clusters of attributes within storylines; they define individuals’ rights, duties, and obligations in relation to others. Positioning shapes social interactions and is tied to specific speech and actions. Although positioning theory emerged from Western theoretical framing, we see alignments with African Indigenous Knowledge—particularly the centrality of story, and the development of the idea of positioning as praxis (Herbel-Eisenmann et al., 2024), which embraces participatory engagement with participants to foreground and honour the stories they bring to their experiences (Yaro & Wagner, 2026). In this paper, we identify the storylines used by Sub-Saharan immigrant parents to articulate their pre- and post-migratory experiences of mathematics learning and how these experiences may shape their support for their children’s mathematics learning in Canada. More importantly, we foreground and interpret the identified storylines through an African Indigenous lens.

5. Methodology

5.1. Data Collection

This research is part of an ongoing collaboration with an immigrant community centre in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to investigate the mathematics experiences of Sub-Saharan African immigrant families (SSAIFs). Although we focus on Sub-Saharan African immigrants living in Alberta, we also acknowledge that the experiences of our participants would resonate with other African immigrant populations in many parts of the world. The focus of this paper is to draw insights from in-depth interaction with a small sample of African immigrant participants in Canada, to demonstrate how we foreground African Indigenous Knowledges in interpreting storylines of Sub-Saharan African parents’ experiences in supporting their children’s mathematics learning.

African immigrant parents in this study refer to parents who were born in Africa but have immigrated to Canada or are seeking or have sought refuge or asylum in Canada. They have their children (Grades 6–9) living with them and enrolled in schools in the Greater Edmonton region in Alberta, Canada. The twelve (12) parent participants represent diverse socio-economic statuses and educational backgrounds. For instance, seven of the participants have at least bachelor’s degrees from their home countries and continue to pursue further studies at various levels (i.e., master’s, PhD and other professional certificates) in Canada. Two participants completed junior high school while three have secondary education from their respective home countries. They have migrated from Kenya, Ghana, Somalia, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, arriving in Canada within the past five years and living in Edmonton. The participants’ past schooling experiences shaped both their perspectives on mathematics learning and how they support their children’s mathematics learning in their new Canadian context as animated in the storylines presented in this paper.

Due to the parents’ differing schedules, we provided parent participants the opportunity to choose between a focus group discussion or an individual interview at a place convenient to them. We conducted one focus group session lasting 100 min with three parents and nine individual interviews lasting about an hour each at a newcomer’s centre in the city, where the parents have been dropping off their children for homework support. The interviews were conducted from May 2023 to June 2024. The focus group and individual interviews with the Sub-Saharan African immigrant parents (SSAIPs) were structured by our questions on what mathematics learning means to them as immigrant parents, their prior mathematics experiences and what they think of their children’s mathematics learning in Canada, and their relationship with their children’s school and teachers. All the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. The participant names in this paper are pseudonyms.

5.2. Data Analysis

With the research focus in mind, we used positioning theory to pay attention to parents’ accounts of mathematics and their perspectives and experiences of their children’s mathematics learning in Canada. With this analysis we identified the positioning suggested by the storylines. The reciprocal nature of storylines requires us to consider the positioning of all the people in the relationship, not only the students (Herbel-Eisenmann et al., 2015). We noted the parents’ positioning of teachers and schools, which revealed expectations with respect to their children’s mathematics learning. The parents’ positioning of students revealed the parents’ expectations for their children. And the positioning of parents explained their actions in support of their children’s mathematics learning.

The data analysis process involved two levels of iterative analysis (Yaro, 2021). First, we individually worked on the transcribed interviews to identify storylines using key areas of our research—mathematics, the parents’ perspectives, children’s perspectives and the storylines. At the individual level, each of the team members read and identified storylines at play in each participant’s transcript, and coded narratives and excerpts as representative storylines. We identified 17 storylines in 50 excerpts in phase one of our analysis. Phase two of the analysis involved collaborative coding where we met as a research team to discuss, compare, and refine our coding. The joint coding led us to six key storylines. We considered storylines that responded to our research focus: what are the mathematics experiences and perspectives of Sub-Saharan African immigrant parents?

Some storylines were combined or re-named to capture a broader storyline for a deeper insight. For instance, during the collaborative coding, storylines like “African parents work together to support their children’s mathematics”, “African parents celebrate their children’s mathematics success”, “African immigrant families formed social networks (homework club) to help their children math learning” were combined and renamed as “children’s mathematics learning is a communal responsibility”. This new label better captures the meaning of the excerpts and keeps the storyline more focused at the broader level while allowing deeper analysis. The nuances are explored in our elaboration of the storyline, including the relevant interview excerpts. From an AIK and Afrocentric lens, we examined critically how experiences and perspectives shared by the participants in the study resonate or not with African ways of knowing, either old or new African ways. To better situate the findings of our work, where we refer to AIK in the results, we made connections to the existing literature, Adinkra epistemologies, Ghanaian/African proverbs and wise sayings and our lived experiences as African and/or living and working with African communities both in continental and diasporic Africa. We have listed our storylines we identified in the parent’s data in Table 2.

Table 2. Storylines identified in parents’ data and their coding.

Final Coding Guidelines	Storylines
Excerpts that point to the role of community in children’s mathematics learning	Mathematics learning is a communal responsibility
Excerpts that point to the feared and stressful mathematics experiences of African immigrant parents	Mathematics as memory work is feared and stressful
Mathematics teachers are also responsible for the moral upbringing of the child	Mathematics teachers are also responsible for the moral upbringing of the child
Excerpts that explicitly explain how adults tell children what to do	Adults tell children what to do
Excerpts that explain how adults negotiate with their children to learn mathematics at home	Adults negotiate with children about what to do
Any reference to God or ancestors	Success in math is a gift from God

6. Results: Storylines

6.1. Children’s Mathematics Learning Is a Communal Responsibility

The concept of communal responsibility in children’s mathematics education emerged as one of the storylines from the African immigrant parents’ data. This collective approach reflects deeply rooted old African cultural values that position learning as a shared social endeavour rather than an individual pursuit. G. Dei (2000) noted that within African epistemologies knowledge acquisition is fundamentally relational and communal in nature, contrasting with more individualistic Western educational models. The concept of communal responsibility is seen as an entrenched African value that transcends any European colonization.

Parents consistently articulated this communal perspective through interview excerpts that highlighted the contrast between their experiences in Africa and their current Canadian context:

I grew up in a rural community in Kenya where we can send our children to the next neighbour for homework assistance, but I can’t do that here [in Canada].

(Lizzy)

When the child is in your stomach, he belongs to you, but when he/she is born, he belongs to the community. […] We have formed a homework club here to help our children.

(Batilo)

These excerpts indicate parents’ recognition of the communal nature of child-upbringing in their cultural contexts. The formation of “homework clubs” can be seen as a contemporary expression of ujamaa, or “familyhood,” as articulated by Nyerere (1968). These clubs function not only as practical support systems but also as symbolic enactments of ujamaa in the diaspora—spaces where families collaborate as a collective to raise and educate children. Much like traditional African village models, where learning was communal and intergenerational, networks like homework clubs reflect a conscious effort to re-establish cultural norms in a new setting.

The parents’ view of community-based mathematical support reflects Ubuntu, the African Indigenous Knowledge that recognizes collective communal well-being, and future prosperity. Through collective investment in children’s mathematical education, these Sub-Saharan African immigrant communities secure not just individual success but collective advancement. Despite their commitment to communal responsibility towards collective success, parents acknowledged significant contextual challenges in maintaining these support networks within the Canadian socio-cultural context:

Sometimes everyone is busy […] many have mortgages to pay. They have to work several hours a week. Some don’t even come to the community gathering or bring their children to the homework club for support even though they need it.

(Dennis)

Indeed, Li et al. (2023) highlighted the impact of the rising cost of living across Canadian communities and its impact on the quality of life of many families. However, Dennis’ comment above highlights the tension between cultural ideals and economic realities faced by the African immigrant families. Parents explained that while similar economic demands might exist in their countries of origin, they would have felt more supported by their extended families who would give them land, cattle and other resources to establish themselves. As Punjani et al. (2024) noted, the transplantation of African parenting values to the Canadian context often disrupts traditional communal support systems, requiring immigrant families to navigate unfamiliar expectations with limited social resources. Despite these obstacles, SSAIFs persist in maintaining communal support structures, positioning the community as pivotal in supporting their children’s mathematics education. The storyline indicates how enduring cultural values continue to shape SSAIFs’ educational engagement and support for their children’s mathematics learning, even in unfamiliar and often challenging cultural settings.

6.2. Mathematics Teachers Are Responsible for the Moral Upbringing of Children

In Sub-Saharan African traditions, elders and adults occupy a distinctive role in shaping the moral behaviour of children. The moral upbringing of children has always been part of the Sub-Saharan African cultural tradition of socializing a child to become a responsible adult in their community. Even before the continent’s encounter with Europeans, Africans have always valued morality, discipline and respect for fellow humans, with the community being responsible for instilling such values in the child. Cultural symbols and proverbs (old Africa) serve as powerful vehicles for communicating community expectations regarding the ethical dimensions of teaching. Among Akan people (a major tribe in Ghana), for instance, the Adinkra symbol Akoko Nan (“the leg of a hen”) represents the delicate balance between nurturing and discipline. This concept is articulated in the Akan proverb, Akoko nan tia ba na enkum ba (“The foot of a hen steps on the child [chick] but it doesn’t kill the child [chick]”). This metaphor establishes moral guidance as both gentle and firm—corrective without being destructive.

In the context of education, teachers are seen as playing a role of elders/adults with responsibility that extends beyond academic instruction to encompass the moral formation and character development of children. The African immigrant parents in this study valued similar expectations of their children’s mathematics teachers within the Canadian educational system. They consistently positioned teachers as parental figures responsible not only for mathematical content delivery but also for shaping their children’s ethical development. This integrated view of academic and moral education was explicitly articulated by a parent who emphasized the teacher’s responsibility for behavioural guidance:

Here is my child, the teacher has the responsibility and accountability to make him listen when he is at school. He has a free will to choose within the domain of good things as free will, but if a teacher sees something is going to ruin my child’s life, he has no option, he has to make him listen, [my child] has to unlearn certain things. Our kids are their [teachers’] kids. They should ensure that children behave well. When [the children] behave well in school, they will do well in math too.

(Josh)

This parent’s statement establishes an implied connection between moral formation and mathematics achievement, positioning good moral behaviour as foundational to academic success. Furthermore, the parents’ expectations regarding teacher responsibilities were further illuminated during focus group discussions where they expressed disappointment with disciplinary approaches that contradicted their cultural expectations:

Lassana: Yes. And if your do something wrong instead of sitting the child down and talk to him or maybe sometimes they

Reena: No. They just send the child home to stay maybe for one week or two.

Interviewer: Oh suspension?

Reena: Yes suspension.

Lassana: Yes, suspension, and the others are going ahead in math class.

Ime: Yes, and do something bad they send you home. No chance of advising you as their son or daughter.

This exchange reveals a fundamental cultural disconnect regarding appropriate responses to behavioural issues. Drawing on African Indigenous Knowledge, Waghid (2014) emphasized the value of Ubuntu as an ethic of communal care, reconciliation, and moral development. From this perspective, disciplinary actions like suspension can represent missed opportunities for moral guidance and communal restoration and may even exacerbate academic gaps in subjects like mathematics.

The parents’ concern about children missing mathematics lessons during suspension periods highlights their integrated view that academic and moral development are mutually reinforcing domains, urging a shift towards more inclusive and contextualized pedagogical practices.

This storyline positions the teacher–student relationship as fundamentally relational in nature, extending beyond the transmission of mathematical content to encompass broader developmental responsibilities. As Parsons and MacCartney (2023) argued, an ethic of care in education positions teachers as relational beings responsible not only for intellectual instruction but also for the moral and emotional well-being of their students. By conceptualizing mathematics teachers as moral guides, these African immigrant parents advocate for an educational approach that nurtures both intellectual growth and character formation.

6.3. Mathematics as Memory Work Is Feared and Stressful

The analysis of the data suggests that African immigrant parents’ position mathematics as memory work, feared and stressful. This positioning is shaped by parents’ cultural models of education and reflects their perspectives and engagement with their children’s mathematics learning, which were shaped by the parents’ cultural models of mathematics education. Here we refer to cultural models as parents’ beliefs shaped by their experiences and reflected in their practices (J. Anderson et al., 2017). Parents’ perspectives were evident in their descriptions of their own mathematics experiences in their respective African countries. Each parent shared his/her memories of mathematics learning growing up in Sub-Saharan Africa. The description of parents’ personal school experiences was filled with catch-phrases such as “intense pressure” to memorize for national exams, “fear of failing and fear of what others would say if you don’t do well”, and a “nightmare”. The following excerpts are representative of parents’ voices with regard to their schooling experiences:

would say I was not very extraordinary but not very poor also, so my achievements were okay in terms of, if you think about percentages, but if I think about enjoyment, I don’t see that there was an enjoyment in learning math. It was much of it like it was a routine you have to do well because it is an expectation, societal expectation that you need to fulfil. If you don’t do a math question correct, you got beaten or whipped by the teacher.

(Joseph)

Another parent (Malee) noted:

After say 20 years studying in Kenya and having that stress because of the test and exams, you cannot imagine that right now I am 40 years old I still have the nightmare that I have[sic] in high school when we had the exam. I still have the nightmare.

(Malee)

Leticia explained that although her understanding of mathematics has “shifted” since moving to Canada, “there is still that anxiety as a parent,” whereby she does not want her daughter to make “silly mistakes and lose her points.” Therefore, Leticia ensures that her daughter practices more mathematics at home even if it is not homework assigned from school, suggesting how Leticia’s own cultural model of education might have shaped her mathematics involvement practices:

I think my understanding of learning and teaching and engaging with the math has shifted, because growing up in that culture where everything was either right or wrong and then moving into different cultural contexts and knowing from my daughter’s math projects that math learning can come in different ways, has already shifted my understanding about how should the math or science be taught. Sometimes when she is doing math, I want to see. There is that anxiety still, as a parent. I don’t want her to make silly mistakes and lose her points. Still, there is that cultural emphasis. She might have shared with you that even if her science teacher says, “This, not a homework.” She brings the worksheet home; I tell her to sit down and complete it now.

(Leticia)

Parents’ perspectives and experiences from their home countries indeed are reflected in how they support their children’s mathematics learning in the Canadian context (Fryberg & Markus, 2007; Reese & Gallimore, 2000; Crafter, 2012); however, their involvement practices seem to be evolving as parents encounter the new culture of schooling in the Canadian context. In other words, their cultural models of education are not constant, in fact, they may change over time, such that their experiences in the host country might offset those previously held in the home country (e.g., Leticia’s excerpt).

Sub-Saharan African immigrant experiences of mathematics prior to migration position the subject as stressful and fearful, mostly due to societal and institutional expectations modelling the subject. In this positioning, teachers become tools to fulfil institutional expectations through adopting pedagogies that focus on students passing high-stakes exams. Despite parents’ negative school mathematics experiences, they do not only value mathematics as a “gateway” subject with the potential to break racial barriers that inhibit their access to opportunities in the dominant community (Yaro & Wagner, 2026); they are motivated and encouraged by their new cultural context to provide positive mathematics learning experiences for their children.

We note that this storyline sits in tension with AIK and makes us reflect on what it means to know or demonstrate competence from an African-centred perspective. From an African Indigenous lens, learning is through apprenticeship, with every member of the community serving as an educator, offering mentorship in authentic and meaningful contexts. Competence from an AIK lens is measured holistically, addressing dimensions of being human (Ubuntu), spiritual, and intellectual rather than one-shot state-sanctioned exams or tests that only measures cognitive aspects of learning. Testing and exams, which African immigrant parents described as creating nightmares and being stressful, are colonial methods of measuring competence, which detach students from their authentic contexts, and portray them as individual beings rather than a member of a collective community which shapes SSAIPs’ ways of knowing and being. Thus, we see this storyline as an example of a new African perspective—rooted in African school practices established as part of colonialism.

6.4. Adult Tells Children What to Do

From AIK perspectives, children are positioned as listeners and doers, taking instructions from elders and adults. In traditional African societies (old and new Africa), adults and elders are revered and considered knowledgeable (G. J. S. Dei & Kempf, 2013), offering models and activating as counsellors or advisors for the younger children. In Chinua Achebe’s popular novel, Things Fall Apart, he reiterated the value of experience and wisdom that comes with age in the following proverb: “what the old can see standing, the child will not see even if he is on top of an2 iroko tree”. Parents, siblings and adults in the family and the community deem it a responsibility to guide the child through what is deemed appropriate in the cultural context of the society in terms of education, moral standards, societal norms, and social responsibilities. On the other hand, children see every adult in the community as a mother, father, uncle, brother or sister regardless of the close, distant or no-blood relationship, and hence accept to be corrected, guided, or mentored through the socialization process. Indeed, it is common to refer to an adult woman or man with the same words used for mother or father. However, in other situations, we admit that adults will provide children with some agency for experiential learning such as reported in (Yaro, 2021), where children are apprenticed in daily transactions through buying and selling using physical cash.

For SSAIPs in this study, now living in Canada, they seem to employ less authoritative parenting strategies in context, contrary to their own personal experiences growing up in Sub-Saharan Africa, which was more characterized by “strictness” and “fewer negotiations” between parent and the child.

Sometimes at home, I tell him you must do it [math] whether you want it or not. His teacher doesn’t know [chuckles], nobody knows this, [chuckles] but I do not force him too much. I just ask nicely, and we agree. There are several days that he didn’t do math at home. I say, “Okay. That’s okay.” Sometimes I say, “You have to do this right now.”.

(Agalga)

I have the responsibility and accountability to make him listen. He has a free will to choose within the domain of good things as free will, but if I see something is going to ruin him, he has no option. He has to listen, and he has to unlearn certain things. Still, this African way is helping. It’s not only helping in math, but it’s helping also in behavioural problems. Although the government said this and that, but there’s a way to train the kids in our African way (Joseph).

Parents shared specific examples, including engaging in “lots of discussion” and negotiations to have their children do some mathematics or any extra learning at home. They, however, stressed that they sometimes draw on what one parent (Joseph) referred to as “an3 African way” of parenting which they still find useful in the Canadian context:

Sometimes we fight [literally], and we have lots of discussions so to just convince her to do some mathematics, to do some homework…If the teacher will just ask them to do homework, I will appreciate that because they do it right away. Since we don’t have such things [homework] here, I have to add a little bit of pressure and supervision to help her go ahead. The point of view here in a school is like this; if a student wants to study, she or he is going to study. Otherwise, if they don’t want to study, don’t put pressure on them. I would like my child to study, and I would like my child to go to university. So this is me—sorry. I have to pressure her but not the kind of pressure at home [Africa].

(Malee)

SSAIPs utilize their cultural experiences in child rearing to parent their children in their new Canadian context and, most importantly, find it as their ultimate responsibility, per African culture, to ensure their children do their homework or obey them [parents] at home. More importantly, we find parenting strategies were not only informed by their cultural worldviews, but also their quest to see their children succeed in mathematics and make it to the university or get higher education, underscoring the gateway positioning of mathematics. Malee’s excerpt above further positions the mathematics teacher as a person with power structure or command, drawing on her prior cultural and educational experiences in African cultural contexts where students are expected to revere, respect, and obey teachers and do what the teacher asks them to do. She believes her daughter will do math homework “right away” if it is sanctioned by the teacher or school.

6.5. Adults Negotiate with Children About What to Do

While parents tell children what to do (as indicated in the previous storyline), parents also appear to meld Western/Canadian ways of thinking (learning through play; finding ways to engage/motivate students). For instance, while Agalga and Mashy, and Malee, sometimes insist on what they want their children to do at home, on many occasions, they negotiate to reach an agreement with their children, which appears in contrast to these parents’ own cultural upbringing in Africa where children are expected to do what their parents want them to do, sometimes to children’s displeasure. In other words, parents decide what is right for the children, and children have to listen and obey their parents’ instructions. Being in Canada, parents indicated that sometimes, they [parents] just agree to the wishes of their children or allow them to do what they want to do, especially when they think their children are feeling bored (as one parent put it) with the assigned math activities at home. Each of the parents emphasized that the school system does not encourage extra work at home. Hence, children seem to resist attempts to get them to do additional mathematics at home or any school-related work. However, parents still find creative strategies to engage their children in mathematics learning at home. Such effort by parents pushes for extra math support for their children, appearing to be consistent with their cultural model of education where math is seen as the gateway to career opportunities. The excerpts below indicate parents’ effort to engage their children in mathematics learning at home despite the pushback they sometimes encounter with their children:

I came up with some ideas. I bought a curriculum book for my child, for his age, to start doing some extra math practice at home. Then he starts to feel bored, he said, “Why should I do that? The teacher told me I don’t have to do anything at home; I’m supposed to have fun at home.” I changed that to do more of a game thing for him to have fun because he feels so bored doing study from the curriculum. He doesn’t want to open the book and just look at it. It’s a new way of learning for me. It’s a huge way. This is the first impression that I got from being here.

(Mashy)

Mashy had to change her approach to supporting her son because her son felt “bored” anytime she opened the textbook for him to practice some mathematics. She had to resort to math games that she feels will excite her son, and at the same time, learn the school mathematics.

By doing this, Mashy appears to be melding the two oppositional discourses or social practices of learning, the informal (games) and formal (school mathematics). Gutiérrez et al. (1999) referred to similar practices as hybridity or locating a third space. What is interesting to us here is that Mashy did not view play or games as counterscript to her son’s school mathematics, but instead, she opportunistically positioned the emergence of both the formal or school math and the games as a potentially legitimate context for her son’s mathematics learning.

For instance, during one visit to the centre, Kwesi observed and participated in a game Hakeem (Mashy’s son) initiated. Hakeem’s father, mother and he engaged in this game. After one round of playing a simple card game Hakeem learned from school (making a sum of 25), he amended the rules for the second round of play, which involved the use of addition and subtraction to make a sum using at least three cards from the deck. During this game, Kwesi could sense Hakeem’s excitement and passion: he initiated the game and was actively involved throughout.

Similar ideas about the importance of informal context and the melding of practices from two cultural worlds (Africa and Canada) were evident in Mashy’s interactions with her son. Mashy recalls her childhood experience where she used to be given money to budget for an entire week and needed to decide how much she had to use it every day for lunch at school. Mashy shared that since her son’s (Hakeem) school has a lunch program, she does not usually give him money to buy lunch at school as she would probably have done in her home country. Consistent with Mashy’s own experience learning about money when young, she finds it useful to engage her son in improvised activities that she believes will help her son understand the concept of money. For instance, she uses Monopoly (a Western/Canadian money game) to support her son in understanding the concept of money. She described the game and added the relevance of this money game in her child’s mathematics learning:

Nowadays, we start to spend one hour every day playing Monopolies. Monopolies[sic] has so many calculation and mathematics aspect including knowing more about money. I want his brain to be active in numbers and playing with numbers adding subtracting all these things faster…

(Mashy)

Mashy added,

There is a bank so you have money. My son always is the one responsible. He is a banker. He’s responsible to give people money. When somebody gives him extra money, he knows how to take that extra and give him the change. He knows how to divide the money equally. We have to play with a token and goes in a certain area. Sometimes when you purchase something, he said, “No, it’s cost this. You have to give me this. I will give you back this.”

(Mashy)

Mashy, Agalga and Malee shared various ways in which their parenting and supporting styles have changed as they now draw on both Western/Canadian experiences and their prior cultural experiences from Africa in supporting their children’s mathematics learning in Canada. More important is how parents modified such engagements to mirror the present culture (Canadian context) in response to the Canadian system of education and general parenting. In short, parents position informal spaces as a mathematics learning opportunity. It is important to note here that parents themselves saw these modifications or alterations to their prior cultural experiences or practices happening more or less spontaneously. Framed definitively, the families tended to retain some features of their African culture or backgrounds and modify others for the benefit of their children’s mathematics learning in Canada. This new storyline seems to be an example of new African perspectives.

6.6. Success in Math Is a Gift from God

The concept of God or a supreme being manifested in ways African immigrant parents described the mathematical abilities of themselves, their children, or others. One parent said of herself, “I would say God gifted me with that mathematics, so I never struggled with math.” Other excerpts point to the role of a supernatural being in mathematics ability:

But the reality of the matter is people are intelligent, everybody’s intelligent, but some people are more blessed with math intelligence. I would even proudly say we are [Africans] blessed more intelligent and more resilient. One of the wonders, for me everything I see is a wonder. I believe in God, but one of the wonders of Africa is the pyramids. Just think about that, until now people just can’t figure out how these pyramids were built. With all the knowledge with all the smart guys of the world today those many years back, these guys were able to build these pyramids. They were able to put together those stones that were tons and tons of weight, and they were able to come up with that shape, that mega thing, and it stands until today.

(Emma)

When you get higher and become a maths teacher so say in college, in the universities or even school, it’s so important that first of all, leave alone the fact that it creates work for you but also as a teacher you are helping others to tap into their wealth or gifts that that God has given them.

(Denise)

From an AIK lens, Gye Nyame Adinkra symbols acknowledge the existence of supreme beings. Gye Nyame means omnipresence or omniscient, and the ultimate source of knowledge and wisdom, according to Akan epistemology. From Kwesi’s experience and knowledge of Akan culture, when people are complimented on their brilliance, they respond by attributing it to a gift from God as a sign of humility. Since all supernatural gifts (including mathematics brilliance) are from God according to Akan’s beliefs in divinity, it is expected that such a gift is put in service of the community, or for communal good, consistent with Ubuntu philosophy as articulated in Emma’s excerpt above.

We are not interested in saying whether ability in mathematics is God-given or not. We see this storyline evoking different questions and positioning. We are interested in the impact of people saying mathematics ability comes from God. What happens when this is said to a student from Sub-Saharan Africa? Or when someone refers to their giftedness (when at home giftedness is positioned as coming from God), what does it mean to the student? And does it matter who says it? Mathematics education as a research field has considerable literature on giftedness (described nicely by Leikin, 2021) and active efforts to argue against referring to success in math as giftedness (e.g., Boaler, 2022).

7. Discussion, Conclusions and Implications

In this closing section, we consider the implications of the storylines drawn from the participant parents, and discuss the storylines in relation to the relevant literature in mathematics education. Generally, this literature does not carry an African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) perspective but there are connections. This points to an important implication of our work: that AIK needs to be explored more extensively in mathematics education research.

Before turning to connecting the storylines with the literature, we note another important implication of this study: the importance of mathematics teachers being aware of how their newly migrated students’ families experience mathematics education. It can inform their teaching to know the storylines, and to understand them in terms of AIK. With this implication, we note the importance of context: Sub-Saharan African immigrant families in other parts of the world, including other parts of Canada, likely have some similar experiences and storylines, but probably also have other storylines or different nuances to the storylines. So further research is needed similar to our work. Even math teachers can do this work by talking with families of their students (though not likely with the same rigour and probably not with their own African cultural lens).

Now we turn to connections within the literature and the implications arising from these connections. Two contextual forms of cultural models of mathematics education appear to shape African immigrant families’ involvement practices (J. Anderson et al., 2017; Crafter, 2012; Fryberg & Markus, 2007; Reese & Gallimore, 2000), namely: the cultural model of education experienced in their home countries (African) and what they have experienced or are still experiencing in the host country (Canada).

Some of the parents’ mathematics experiences such as pressure to memorize for exams for fear of failing, math not being enjoyable, and math being stressful seem to be shaped by their prior educational experiences—the system, pedagogical approaches, and how mathematics was modelled for them. African immigrant parents in this study experienced education in their home countries (Sub-Saharan Africa) where the education systems have a deep-rooted history of colonialism. G. Dei (2004), writing on schooling and education in Africa, noted that the structure and nature of the current African education system, a colonial legacy, appears to be in “crisis” due to misguided educational policies that have failed to adequately account for a variety of human experiences that shape both the individual and societal growth.

The parents’ experiences of pressure and stress in the school system was unsurprising to us. Kwesi reflects on his experience growing up in Ghana, where he experienced a similar cultural model of education which reminds him of the proverbial saying “chew, pour, and forget”, which literally means rote learning or learning by memorization for the sole purpose of passing the examination. Rote learning in itself is stressful and cognitively demanding to many students. This prior educational experience of parents seems to influence their mathematics identity and how they model mathematics for their children (Colegrove & Krause, 2017).

Colegrove and Krause’s (2017) study with Latino immigrant parents found they often felt confused and frustrated when teachers required their children to describe their process rather than just the final answer of a mathematics problem. The parents in that study viewed such requirements by teachers as complicating things rather than showing deeper conceptual understanding of the problem. Similarly, Civil et al. (2005) found that some of the participating immigrant parents in their study expressed differences in pedagogical approaches. For instance, the participants described how division was taught as inefficient and slow due to the demand for their children to show detailed steps in arriving at a final answer. Our study’s findings are also consistent with these studies and with those with culturally and linguistically diverse immigrant parents in the UK (De Abreu & Cline, 2005), and Crafter’s (2012) study with South Asian immigrant parents in England. While these latter studies highlight specific conflicting pedagogical practices between immigrants’ home and the host country’s school practices, African immigrant families in this study also described how they are impacted positively by their children’s schooling experiences in Canada, despite the parents’ own negative school experiences. Our study further points to the need for a nuanced understanding of parents’ beliefs in that parents retained some beliefs/perspectives and practices based on their own experiences in Africa but also took up new ones.

This study adds another layer to the conversation on parents’ perceptions on their children’s mathematics learning by highlighting how the perspective of African immigrant parents has changed as a result of their children’s encounter with a new school or mathematics learning experience. For instance, parents appear to have come to view mathematics as a more enjoyable subject, stress-free, and inquiry-oriented. Therefore, while parents retained some cultural models from Africa such as being moderately authoritative in supporting their children’s mathematics learning in Canada, some of the perceptions of these parents evolved to reproduce some aspects of models of education that are prevalent in Canada, the host country. From an Afrocentric standpoint, “one’s life experiences are shaped significantly by one’s social milieu—a person’s immediate and intimate environment” (Schiele, 2017, p. 19). Thus, the general dynamics of the host country’s school system appear to contribute to how these African immigrant parents make sense of their children’s mathematics learning in the Canadian context. For instance, parents still welcome the mathematics learning culture (i.e., less stressful learning environment) and pedagogical practices as a much-improved learning experience compared to what they (parents) had in their home countries. This tension points to the significance of parental views on what math is most important, which is a viewpoint we do not find in the literature currently.

In African contexts, school teachers are most revered and trusted to deliver not only content or school curriculum, but also ensure the moral conformity of students. Parents see teachers as second parents away from home and have vested authority in them to teach and support the general upbringing of the children. Students, similarly, may accept and respect the responsibilities vested in their teachers to act as their parents and, in many cases, teachers become confidants of their students because of the parenthood responsibility they play in the community. Some African immigrant parents in the study seem to project similar trust, responsibility and expectation on their children’s schools and teachers in the Canadian context, similar to what was reported in Civil et al. (2005) in their study with Latino immigrant parents in the United States.

In summary, regarding parents’ perceptions of their children’s mathematics learning, parents demonstrated awareness of their children’s mathematics learning not only as a gateway to upward social mobility, but also a means of challenging racial stereotypes in racialized contexts. In addition, while African immigrant parents showed awareness of the differences in cultural models of education (Canada and home countries), they strategically merged strengths from both models in supporting their children’s mathematics learning in Canada.