Brazilian and Spanish Mathematics Teachers’ Predispositions towards Gamification in STEAM Education

Paula López,Ángel Alsina,Jefferson Rodrigues-Silva

doi:10.3390/educsci11100618

Abstract

This article reports a multiple case study in which we analyse Brazilian and Spanish mathematics teachers’ opinions about and predispositions toward gamified activities in STEAM education. To obtain data, we administered a survey to 56 in-service mathematics teachers in primary and secondary education from these countries. The survey had been previously validated throughout an expert judgement process. Our results show a high percentage of teachers who think this kind of activity has positive effects on students’ development, improving their affective domain toward mathematics and required skills for mathematical competency. Notwithstanding, many teachers report insecurity and lack of training for employing such educational methodologies.

Highlights

Fostering students’ motivation, engagement, and behavioural changes is an appealing objective that researchers argue the gamification of education could achieve [1,2,3,4]
Considering the background described and these gaps in the literature, this study aims to analyse the predisposition of mathematics teachers in primary and secondary education to carry out gamification activities in STEAM education
We present these results in the form of four tables structured with the names of corresponding categories in the first column; examples of teachers’ response excerpts to qualify them in the second column; and columns with the quantification of the frequency that those categories appear in responses from Spain and Brazil

Summary

Introduction

Fostering students’ motivation, engagement, and behavioural changes is an appealing objective that researchers argue the gamification of education could achieve [1,2,3,4]. It seems desirable to educate people with interdisciplinary knowledge and develop skills and abilities for autonomously and critically acting, living, and working in a complex and ever-changing twenty-first-century world, which is promised by STEAM Education—an interdisciplinary approach among the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Humanities, and Mathematics [5]. STEAM Education has recently become a trend in educational development [8] that promotes learning throughout and for the interdisciplinary enterprise [5]. We find it across all educational stages: from early childhood education until higher education [4,9]. STEAM Education emerged as a new pedagogy during the Americans for the Arts-National Policy Roundtable discussion in 2007 “to help counterbalance the increased focus on STEM subjects and the decline in arts education in the U.S.” [10] (p. 32)

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