Who's the winner? Children's math learning in competitive and collaborative scenarios

Abstract

Games are frequently used to promote math learning, yet the competitive and collaborative contexts introduced by games may exacerbate gender differences. In this study, 1st and 2nd grade children in the U.S. (ages 5–8; N = 274; 70% White, 15% Asian, 2% Black, 1% Native American, 14% mixed or other race; 17% Hispanic) played either a competitive, collaborative, or solo game to learn about a challenging novel math concept: proportion. Overall, both social contexts boosted perseverance and task attitudes. However, analyses revealed the competitive condition yielded gender differences in attention to proportion in the presence of competing cues, with older boys underperforming in the competition condition. Potential explanations for these findings, as well as implications for classroom math learning, are discussed.

Registered Reports in Child Development: Introduction to the Special Section

“…This finding runs counter to the existing research on the topic and the prevailing view that competitive games may be more harmful to girls compared to boys. Thus, Fish et al's (2023) article nicely illustrates how RRs combat the types of biases that are present in the traditional literature discussed previously, namely the biases towards statistically significant results as well as findings that comport with prevailing views.…”

“…The Special Section consists of eight articles that strikingly represent the breadth and depth of developmental research in substantive topic, methodological approach, and target population. The articles include experimental studies with young children (Fish et al, 2023; Stengelin et al, 2023) and chimpanzees (Engelmann et al, 2023), assessments of the efficacy of interventions with children and adolescents (Ceccon et al, 2023; Cipriano et al, 2023; Gilligan‐Lee et al, 2023), work focused on underrepresented populations (Ceccon et al, 2023; Cimpian et al, 2023; Leer et al, 2023), a study consisting of national public data (Cimpian et al, 2023), a natural experiment (Leer et al, 2023), and a meta‐analysis (Cipriano et al, 2023). A major goal of the Special Section was to demonstrate the broad applicability of RRs for developmental research—that they are not solely for laboratory experiments—and the eight articles collectively met that goal beyond what we could have hoped for.…”

“…In the context of RRs, however, null results have strong value because the Stage 1 review process is intended to ensure that the study will be informative regardless of the results, even if they are null. Fish et al's (2023) article on gender differences in how competitive and collaborative math learning games were related to math performance found almost no evidence for differences. Moreover, the one gender difference they did observe indicated that boys underperformed after playing competitive games.…”