Traditional educational institutions often treat mathematics and writing as separate disciplines. This limits the opportunities for students to use writing as a tool to make sense of mathematical concepts and data-driven arguments. There is a need for pedagogical frameworks that empower students to use writing as a way to strengthen their mathematical identity, engage with real-world data through a social justice lens, and question the ethical implications of quantitative information in everyday media. By empowering students to think critically about the world around them and develop their own perspectives through both quantitative and qualitative reasoning they become more motivated, invested, and confident in their abilities for understanding and advocating for meaningful social change (citizenship). Writing, like mathematics, shares many characteristics when it comes to competencies needed for building citizenship like: functional literacy, reflection, and critical inquiry. Critically engaging with data involves more than taking data in at face value and requires looking at data from all angles contextually while reflecting on systemic/power dynamics. Ignoring that data are not entirely objective and failing to recognize that media can distort research through misinformation, biases, or positionality allows for cycles of oppression to exist. I argue that using writing as a tool for building data literacy not only strengthens students’ ability to analyze and interpret data but also empowers them to see themselves as agents of social change.

With the support of the Sweetland Writing Fellowship, I developed an undergraduate first year writing course with the intention of using writing as a tool of resilience and for fostering critical literacy. Students were encouraged to look for underlying explanations behind data and question power dynamics in scientific research. I intend to present artifacts from the course that showcase students' engagement with assignments that critically analyze data visualizations in public media, examine bias and ethics in data representation, and compare community-led data activism efforts. Engaging students in critical pedagogy aligns with current discussions around anti-racist education and builds data literacy through social justice-oriented instruction. Empowering students’ voices through culturally responsive content and teaching practices is essential for fostering critical engagement with data and social justice.

Using feedback from dynamic rubrics, reflective essays, feedback request forms, and survey data, I examined students' confidence in writing and mathematical identity, their development of critical data literacy, and their evolving motivations and connections to social justice efforts. This study calls for the need to integrate writing into mathematics lessons while positioning data as a storytelling tool for interdisciplinary learning to amplify student voices and inspire meaningful social change.

Keywords: Student-Agency, Undergraduate Education, Culturally Responsive, Social Justice, Data Ethics, Data Literacy.