Design Characteristics of Board Games for Learning Number and Operations: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Board games are increasingly used in mathematics classrooms, yet little is known about how their design embeds number content beyond early childhood. This systematic literature review maps the design characteristics of board games for teaching number and operations in primary, secondary, and higher education, synthesises their reported outcomes, and identifies research gaps. Following PRISMA 2020, 669 records published between 2016 and 2026 were retrieved from Scopus, Semantic Scholar, and Google Scholar. After screening and quality appraisal with Mullet et al.’s rubric, 16 studies were synthesised narratively. Studies were concentrated in primary education (n = 9) and Indonesia (n = 9), and most used research-and-development designs (n = 9); only 5 included a comparison group. Race-track games with question or task cards were the most common design (n = 9), whereas intrinsic integration, in which moving or building on the board enacts a number operation, appeared in 6 studies that tended to have higher quality scores, an association rather than a causal effect. Procedural knowledge was targeted more often than conceptual knowledge. All 11 achievement studies reported improvement, but only 4 controlled studies showed an advantage over a comparison condition. Board games were associated with motivation, communication, and collaboration, whereas creativity was not measured and retention was examined in only 1 study. Integers were addressed by only 2 studies, and none examined integer subtraction, multiplication, or division in lower secondary school. The review proposes design principles that favour intrinsic integration and calls for controlled studies of board games for integer operations.