New Perspectives in Science Education
Practise Teaching in Virtual Reality (VR) – Reflected Action with Teach-R, the Interactive Virtual Laboratory Classroom
Christina Hildebrandt, university of potsdam, institut of chemistry, departement of chemistry education/didactics; Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany (Germany)
Amitabh Banerji, University Potsdam (Germany)
Abstract
Professionalization must be practical and based on real teaching events. Empirical studies show that considering these aspects the best results will be achieved [1]. Pre-service teachers must also be enabled to self-critically analyze their own lesson planning and implementation in order to be able to further develop their skills. The ability to reflect therefore occupies a key position and must be a central part of the teacher training.
The Teach-R scenario in the virtual reality (VR), which is set in a laboratory classroom [2], is intended to initiate reflection processes as part of the training of preservice chemistry teachers. These are necessary for developing a variety of suitable actions for challenging teaching situations and therefore feeling and being prepared for the challenges of real lessons in which students are experimenting with laboratory equipment and chemicals. The development and testing of a course that integrates the scenario and addresses reflected action strategies is undergoing and one of the intended goals. To be able to measurably address and expand reflection skills, a model for reflection [3] is used as a basis and applied. This model can serve as a guideline for students to reflect, lecturers as an instrument for assessing the quality of student reflections and researchers as a means to gather data. The fundamental aim is to investigate within a pre-post-intervention design whether and to what extent teaching reflections based on a virtual setting imbedded in a course lead to a significant increase in action competence and to what extent these reflections can be measured objectively, reliably and validly. For this purpose, a measuring instrument for data collection was designed.
Keywords: virtual reality, Teach-R, preservice teachers, reflexion competence, action competence
References:
[1] Borchert, J., Knopf-Jerchow, H. & Dabashi, A. (1992). Testdiagnostische Verfahren in Vor-, Sonder- und Realschulen. Heidelberg: Asanger.
[2] Wiepke, A., Hildebrandt, C., Hagen, N., Krüger, A., Lucke, U., & Banerji, A. (2022). Das VR-Labor-Klassenzimmer zur Professionalisierung von Lehramtsstudierenden der Chemie. https://doi.org/10.18420/delfi2022-030
[3] Nowak, A., Kempin, M., Kulgemeyer, C., & Borowski, A. (2019). Reflexion von Physikunterricht (S. 838–841).
