Serious Games and Mathematical Fluency: A Study from the Gender Perspective in Primary Education

Abstract

In recent years, serious games offer great opportunities for learning processes at schools. However, it is unclear whether this type of proposals can offer differentiated answers among the students according to their gender. In this context, the aim of this paper is to know the possible differences that occur in primary school classrooms according to gender, with serious games designed for the development of mathematical fluency, and to examine to what extent these games contribute to the overall school performance. We carried out a quasi-experimental study, including pretest and posttest, without control group and with several experimental groups, and the participation of 284 students from first to fourth grade. The results show that the software benefits boys and girls equally, compared to the previously followed methodology that benefited boys. A clear relation between the results achieved and the performance in the overall students’ grades has also been observed. The conclusions show the potential of serious games in school settings, and the opportunity to approach performance differences based on the gender.