Zones of mathematical play

Abstract

Most research on mathematical play and learning is focused on early childhood. This study examines how mathematical play and learning manifest in older children in a mathematical videogame designed by the first author, Rolly's Adventure. We examined how players experienced mathematical play as they played Rolly's Adventure, with a particular focus on failure paired with feedback. We used video and audio recordings of the players and their bodies, and screen capture of their gameplay. Spoken language, physical gestures, and digital actions were our primary sources of identifying, understanding, and triangulating mathematical play. We found that players pass through five zones of mathematical play that build upon each other and closely interrelate, and that these zones each involve different types of failure, feedback, and learning experiences. This paper provides a productive definition of mathematical play, introduces a framework that describes players' mathematical play experiences, and presents five design principles that can be leveraged to support mathematical play.

Learning through Play in Early Childhood: A Systematic Review

“…Based on the analysis, there is a clear trend of increasing on educational support tools. For example, digital tools and toys (Sakr & Scollan, 2019;Leung et al, 2020;Peppler et al, 2019;Li et al, 2021;Abdi & Cavus, 2019, Duncan et al, 2020Kewalramani et al, 2021;Kewalramani et al, 2020;Vogt & Hollenstein, 2021;Alemi & Haeri, 2020;Bers, 2021) even educational apps and games (Vanbecelaere et al, 2020;Adbo & Carulla, 2020;Williams & Thevenow, 2021;Ramani et al, 2020;Subaramaniam & Mon, 2020;Disney et al, 2019;Outhwaite et al, 2019). What is interesting in this data is that learning through play educational programme in many dimensions have been developed (Gibb et al, 2021;Parrott & Cohen, 2021;Theodotou, 2019).…”

“…By the way, classify skills not found in the present studies. Furthermore, both studies on gamification (Cohrssen & Frank, 2019;Ramani & Scalise, 2020) and non-gamification (Simoncini et al, 2020;Williams & Thevenow, 2021) enhance children's early Mathematic skills.…”

“…Block play could grant a flexible and affordable ways to sustain early mathematical learning through primary school. Interestingly, a study by Williams and Thevenow (2021) on five zones of mathematical play indicated that the players were able to build upon each other and closely interrelate and that these zones involved different types of failure, feedback, and learning experiences. The study is consistent with that by Cohrssen and Frank (2019), which summarized that Math Games may increasing the learning effects.…”