Digital games for math literacy: A systematic literature mapping on Brazilian publications

Abstract

This work surveys the Brazilian scientific production regarding Digital Games (DG) for Math Literacy. Math literacy is divided into three stages: fundamental, numbering and operations. Through a systematic literature mapping, 16.483 papers from all the main events and journals in the computing and informatics in education areas over the last decade were analyzed. Among the few (7) DG found all comply to the features of a Serious Game (SG); most focused on the four basic operations, especially on the multiplication operation; none focused on the fundamentals or numbering; they were meant for children of the first cycle of elementary school; the participation of educators occurred in 5 but in only 2 of them the participation occurred in the designing phase of the game. The majority of SG were evaluated against usability issues rather than learning aspects. The results indicate that Brazilian research on DG for Math Literacy is yet to mature and there is a remarkable absence of SG developments for the initial stages of Math Literacy by the Brazilian scientific community.