THE HIDDEN BEAUTY OF MATHEMATICS: WHAT FAIRY TALES CAN TEACH MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

Abstract

The relationship between children's literature and Mathematics Education has been widely discussed in the literature. However, most studies have focused on the use of narratives as a pedagogical resource for contextualizing school mathematics content. Research investigating how narrative structures themselves activate cognitive processes characteristic of mathematical thinking remains limited. In response to this gap, this article aims to analyze how classic children's stories reveal underlying structures of mathematical thinking by proposing the Analytical Matrix of Mathematical Thinking Structures in Narratives (AMMTSN) as an interpretative framework. This qualitative study adopts a bibliographic and documentary approach, based on the comparative analysis of six classic literary works: The Ugly Duckling, Hansel and Gretel, Pinocchio, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Little Prince, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The analysis was guided by eight AMMTSN categories: classification, pattern recognition, logical reasoning, strategic planning, problem solving, modeling, spatial orientation, and proportionality. The findings indicate that these structures emerge in different ways across the narratives, demonstrating that fairy tales engage cognitive processes associated with mathematical thinking even in the absence of explicit mathematical content. The study concludes that its main theoretical contribution is the proposal of the AMMTSN as an analytical model that broadens the possibilities for investigating the relationship between literature and Mathematics Education, providing a framework applicable to future research and pedagogical practices aimed at fostering mathematical thinking.