Cognitive Science at Scale: Classroom games played with peers, pairing symbolic and intuitive training, durably enhance young children’s learning of mathematics

We report the results of two randomized evaluations of educational interventions targeting children in low-income neighborhoods of Delhi, India. Four math games, played in social groups, associated early emerging and universally intuitive concepts of number and geometry with the mathematical language, symbols, and operations taught in Delhi government schools. The first experiment, conducted in 231 NGO-run preschool classrooms (~2000 children), each with the aid of a special teacher, showed that the games enhanced children’s mastery of mathematics both immediately after the intervention and a year later, after children’s first year of primary school. The second experiment, conducted in 171 kindergarten and first-grade classrooms in government schools (>2700 children), with no extra personnel, showed that the games remained effective when played cooperatively by larger groups of children, led by their regular teachers, during time allotted for math instruction. These experiments show how insights from basic research on children’s mathematical intuitions can be leveraged to design ready-to-scale interventions for the foundational years.