Didactic Games in Primary Schools and Their Types

Abstract

Contemporary pedagogy recognizes structured play's cognitive utility, yet empirical categorizations of didactic interventions remain heavily fragmented. This study investigates the differential impacts of cognitive-constructivist, socio-dramatic, and rule-based competitive games on academic retention and engagement. Utilizing an 18-week longitudinal quasi-experimental design, 214 primary students (ages 7-9) were rigorously analyzed. Implementing standardized interventions integrated into daily curricula, specific outcomes were measured via targeted assessments and observational metrics. Generalized linear mixed models precisely isolated variances attributable to specific game types. Findings demonstrate that rule-based competitive games generated the highest immediate recall rates (31.4% improvement, p < 0.01). Socio-dramatic frameworks exhibited superior long-term retention of complex linguistic concepts (28.7% sustained improvement). Cognitive-constructivist games significantly enhanced spatial reasoning, increasing multi-step problem-solving speeds by 41.2%. The data robustly confirms that non-homogenous applications of gamified didactics yield highly domain-specific cognitive advantages, necessitating selective deployment strictly tailored to targeted learning objectives.