mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SCALER:Synthetic Scalable Adaptive Learning Environment for Reasoning

arXiv 2601.04809 ↗First posted 8 Jan 2026cs.AIcited by 7

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reinforcement learning for reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

Reinforcement learning (RL) offers a principled way to enhance the reasoning capabilities of large language models, yet its effectiveness hinges on training signals that remain informative as models evolve. In practice, RL progress often slows when task difficulty becomes poorly aligned with model capability, or when training is dominated by a narrow set of recurring problem patterns. To jointly address these issues, we propose SCALER (Synthetic sCalable Adaptive Learning Environment for Reasoning), a framework that sustains effective learning signals through adaptive environment design. SCALER introduces a scalable synthesis pipeline that converts real-world programming problems into verifiable reasoning environments with controllable difficulty and unbounded instance generation, enabling RL training beyond finite datasets while preserving strong correctness guarantees. Building on this, SCALER further employs an adaptive multi-environment RL strategy that dynamically adjusts instance difficulty and curates the active set of environments to track the model's capability frontier and maintain distributional diversity. This co-adaptation prevents reward sparsity, mitigates overfitting to narrow task patterns, and supports sustained improvement throughout training. Extensive experiments show that SCALER consistently outperforms dataset-based RL baselines across diverse reasoning benchmarks and exhibits more stable, long-horizon training dynamics.

Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 38 of its 45 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Jan 2026.

Builds on

38 of 45 references.

Closest ancestors · 17

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Towards Understanding Self-play for LLM Reasoning31 Oct
  2. 2025Scheduling Your LLM Reinforcement Learning with Reasoning Trees28 Oct
  3. 2025From Data-Centric to Sample-Centric: Enhancing LLM Reasoning via Progressive Optimization9 Jul
  4. 2025LearnAlign: Data Selection for LLM Reinforcement Learning with Improved Gradient Alignment13 Jun
  5. 2025SwS: Self-aware Weakness-driven Problem Synthesis in Reinforcement Learning for LLM Reasoning10 Jun
  6. 2025Curriculum Reinforcement Learning from Easy to Hard Tasks Improves LLM Reasoning7 Jun
  7. 2025SeRL: Self-Play Reinforcement Learning for Large Language Models with Limited Data25 May
  8. 2025SATURN: SAT-based Reinforcement Learning to Unleash LLMs Reasoning22 May
  9. 2025Self-Evolving Curriculum for LLM Reasoning20 May
  10. 2025Absolute Zero: Reinforced Self-play Reasoning with Zero Data6 May
  11. 2025DeepMath-103K: A Large-Scale, Challenging, Decontaminated, and Verifiable Mathematical Dataset for Advancing Reasoning15 Apr
  12. 2025Efficient Reinforcement Finetuning via Adaptive Curriculum Learning7 Apr
5 more
  1. 2025Synthetic Data Generation & Multi-Step RL for Reasoning & Tool Use7 Apr
  2. 2025DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale18 Mar
  3. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning22 Jan
  4. 2025REINFORCE++: Stabilizing Critic-Free Policy Optimization with Global Advantage Normalization4 Jan
  5. 2023Let's Verify Step by Step31 May

Other references · 21

  1. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  2. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  3. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
  4. 2024MMLU-Pro: A More Robust and Challenging Multi-Task Language Understanding Benchmarkcited by 1,758
  5. 2024OpenAI o1 System Cardcited by 1,220
  6. 2025GLM-4.5: Agentic, Reasoning, and Coding (ARC) Foundation Modelscited by 446
  7. 2025REASONING GYM: Reasoning Environments for Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewardscited by 121
  8. 2024RL on Incorrect Synthetic Data Scales the Efficiency of LLM Math Reasoning by Eight-Foldcited by 99
  9. 2025SPIRAL: Self-Play on Zero-Sum Games Incentivizes Reasoning via Multi-Agent Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 89
  10. 2025What Makes a Reward Model a Good Teacher? An Optimization Perspectivecited by 70
  11. 2024FullStack Bench: Evaluating LLMs as Full Stack Coderscited by 56
  12. 2025RLVE: Scaling Up Reinforcement Learning for Language Models with Adaptive Verifiable Environmentscited by 43
9 more
  1. 2025SPC: Evolving Self-Play Critic via Adversarial Games for LLM Reasoningcited by 40
  2. 2025GenEnv: Difficulty-Aligned Co-Evolution Between LLM Agents and Environment Simulatorscited by 34
  3. 2025Game-RL: Synthesizing Multimodal Verifiable Game Data to Boost VLMs' General Reasoningcited by 30
  4. 2023Vanishing Gradients in Reinforcement Finetuning of Language Modelscited by 26
  5. 2025Synthetic Data RL: Task Definition Is All You Needcited by 15
  6. 2025SynthRL: Scaling Visual Reasoning with Verifiable Data Synthesiscited by 12
  7. 2025Klear-CodeTest: Scalable Test Case Generation for Code Reinforcement Learningcited by 9
  8. 2025Improving Rationality in the Reasoning Process of Language Models through Self-playing Gamecited by 7
  9. 2025ConfClip: Confidence-Weighted and Clipped Reward for Reinforcement Learning in LLMscited by 4

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.

7 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026ReSyn: Autonomously Scaling Synthetic Environments for Reasoning Models
  2. 2025T1: Advancing Language Model Reasoning through Reinforcement Learning and Inference Scaling
  3. 2025Scaling Up RL: Unlocking Diverse Reasoning in LLMs via Prolonged Training
  4. 2026Resource-Efficient Reinforcement for Reasoning Large Language Models via Dynamic One-Shot Policy Refinement
  5. 2025Training Language Models to Reason Efficiently
  6. 2025From Efficiency to Adaptivity: A Deeper Look at Adaptive Reasoning in Large Language Models
  7. 2026Batched Contextual Reinforcement: A Task-Scaling Law for Efficient Reasoning
  8. 2026CoScale-RL: Efficient Post-Training by Co-Scaling Data and Computation