Enhancing Mathematical Reasoning in Primary School: The Strategic Board Game Othello

This design-based study examines how the strategic board game Othello can be used to build mathematical reasoning among primary school students. Its central premise is that reasoning, defined as making a mathematical claim and justifying it through explanation, is increasingly prioritized in international curricula but is difficult for both teachers and students to develop, and that combinatorial strategy games offer a natural context for it. The authors frame their contribution as a practice-oriented set of design principles rather than a finished intervention model, presenting the work as a first iteration whose validity remains open to further testing.

The methodology combined a hermeneutic literature review with the design of a teaching intervention and its implementation in a single fifth-grade class (roughly 12-year-olds) across three 120-minute lessons. Data came from participant observations of two student pairs and the teacher, student-produced materials, transcribed recordings, and semi-structured group interviews, all analyzed against the proposed principles. The authors derive three principles: introducing and repeatedly using an "if...then" formulation to structure reasoning, pairing teams against each other so that students must justify moves to teammates, and varying game starting positions through worksheets to prompt forward-looking strategic thinking.

Reported findings indicate that students progressed from simple, logically valid "if...then" arguments toward chains of informal reasoning across the lessons, and that pair-versus-pair play elicited more justified claims than one-on-one play. Students also planned several moves ahead and considered their opponent's responses, and the authors interpret these behaviors as forms of generalization and communicative reasoning. However, the study acknowledges clear limitations: unjustified "power claims" did not decline notably, competitive secrecy sometimes discouraged mathematical discussion, and the entanglement of the three principles makes it impossible to isolate each one's individual effect. The conclusions are therefore modest, suggesting that the principles in combination show potential for developing reasoning in primary mathematics instruction.