Draw Yourself Learning Math: How Drawings Reveal Multifaceted Identity in Children and Preservice Teachers

This study explores how math identity formation begins in early childhood and continues into adulthood, shaped by personal experiences and cultural messages about who can do math. Using drawings as a research tool, we examined how children and preservice teachers depict themselves learning – and, in the case of preservice teachers, teaching – math. Drawings provide a developmentally flexible, low-stakes medium to reveal emotional responses, metaphors, and beliefs about math. To analyze these visual representations, we applied Zan and Di Martino’s (2007) three-dimensional model of attitude (TMA) framework, which conceptualizes attitudes toward math through emotional disposition, beliefs about the nature of math, and perceived competence. Findings highlight how math learner and teacher identities emerge early and evolve, often in distinct yet overlapping ways. This work contributes to research on identity formation by demonstrating how visual methods, interpreted through the TMA framework, can reveal nuanced perspectives on mathematical identity across age groups.