Digital storytelling (DST) has emerged as a promising pedagogical approach in mathematics education, combining narrative and digital media to enhance conceptual understanding, engagement, and reflective practice. This systematic review synthesises recent research on how DST is conceptualised, implemented, and evaluated in mathematics education. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, four databases (ERIC, Scopus, HAL, Google Scholar) were searched in October 2025. Peer-reviewed studies (2015–2025) explicitly addressing DST in mathematics education were included. Screening and thematic synthesis were independently conducted by the two first authors to reduce bias. A total of 47 studies involving approximately 3000 participants across early childhood, school, and teacher education were included. DST was found to enhance mathematical reasoning, problem-solving, motivation, and self-efficacy, while supporting identity development and collaboration. For teachers, DST fostered reflective practice, emotional awareness, and technological–pedagogical–content integration. Challenges included limited preparation time, insufficient training, and unequal digital access, though emerging AI tools offered promising solutions for scalable DST creation. Evidence highlights DST’s cognitive, affective, and pedagogical benefits, though small-scale and short-term designs limit generalisability. Further longitudinal and cross-context studies are needed.

This study investigates students’ and adults’ performance in judging reasonableness of computational results, namely reflecting on whether these results qualify as acceptable answers to mathematical tasks. Data was gathered via task-based questionnaires from 160 participants, evenly divided between fifth-graders and adults. Their responses to a systematically varied collection of context-free and context-based items shed light on their performance and strategies in relation to two interrelated aspects of reasonableness: number relationships and the effect of operations (internal reasonableness) and the practicality of answers (external reasonableness). The results revealed that students were better at utilising the former criterion compared to the latter, while for adults, the opposite was found. However, adults clearly outperformed students in both aspects. Task characteristics such as the involved numbers and operations, and the correctness or incorrectness of computation results, were found to be associated with fluctuations in performance, although the effect differed between context-free and context-based items. Algorithm- and rule-based strategies were more popular than sense-making ones especially among students, although only the latter type was correlated with increased correct response rates. Students often failed to obtain results that made sense considering real-life situations or the involved numbers and operations. Instead, they blindly trusted algorithms and rules, even when their use was inappropriate or insufficient. The findings highlight that to help students refine their ability to judge reasonableness, mathematics classrooms should prioritise the development of number sense and promote the search for connections between school mathematics and everyday life.