Playing with numbers: special education teachers’ perceptions of game-based mathematics instruction for children with Down syndrome in the United Arab Emirates

Mathematics is a persistent area of difficulty for children with Down syndrome, and game-based learning is widely promoted to support it; yet the evidence is strong only for typically developing learners and remains sparse and mixed for Down syndrome. Because teachers are the gatekeepers of classroom adoption, their perceptions are a necessary precondition for any uptake of game-based methods—but those perceptions have not, to our knowledge, been examined for this population, nor in the Arabic-speaking Gulf. Drawing on self-determination theory to treat motivation (a psychological driver rooted in needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness) and engagement (its observable behavioral and affective expression) as related but distinct constructs, this Brief Research Report examines both. In a cross-sectional online survey, 50 self-selected special education teachers experienced with children with Down syndrome in the United Arab Emirates completed a purpose-built, bilingual (Arabic–English) 12-item perception scale, reported here in full with item-level statistics. Perceptions were strongly and uniformly favorable [composite mean 1.82 on a 1–5 scale where lower is more favorable; 95% CI (1.67, 1.97)], robust across missing-data approaches, and internally consistent (Cronbach's α = 0.86; McDonald's ω = 0.88). Teachers were most favorable toward continued use of games and building on pupils’ favorite games, most reserved toward the strongest assertions of measurable performance gains; perceptions did not differ by gender, teaching experience, or pupils’ ages. We frame these favorable perceptions as an enabling condition for adoption rather than as evidence of effectiveness.