Digital games, mathematics and visuospatial reasoning

Advances in technology have blurred the boundary between representing shapes and objects in two and three dimensions. Similarly, the capacity to translate and transform shapes and objects has moved beyond static and concrete form to representations that are increasingly dynamic and animated. This chapter describes young children’s engagement with digital games as they interpret and navigate information using numeracy understandings and mathematics knowledge. In particular, the chapter highlights case studies of gamers utilising visuospatial reasoning as they solve problems in environments which require high levels of decoding. The chapter is underpinned by the notion that the embodied game space (i.e., the inside and outside space of the game environment) captures the interplay between how mathematics content is represented and the game’s architecture space. This multifaceted and multimodal access to information requires quite different demands than the mathematics encountered by students in typical classroom contexts. Games used by children in the case studies include Pokémon, Prince of Persia and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.