Designing for Relationality in Virtual Reality: Context-Specific Learning as a Primer for Content Relevancy
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Designing for Relationality in Virtual Reality: Context-Specific Learning as a Primer for Content Relevancy Phillip A. Boda 1
&
Bryan Brown 1
# Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Science achievement gaps exhibit racial disparities starting in primary grades and have been shown to persist through middle and high school. In turn, increasing positive attitudes toward science have been shown as one factor that affects academic achievement and motivation among K-12 students. Exploring novel ways that technology can influence diverse students’ attitudes toward science, and the design elements pertinent therein, is thus one prominent goal toward achieving science education for all. Leveraging the immersive nature of Virtual Reality 360 videos, we present a design-based research iteration testing how a novel technology-enhanced learning experience influenced close to 400 urban elementary students’ attitudes toward science. Using a two-way MANCOVA analysis, the data support that our design iteration emphasizing context-specific learning can prime students that do not see science as relevant to them to change these attitudes in significantly positive ways. Implications are discussed around relationality, technology use in urban schools, and local contexts as learning resources. Keywords Attitudes toward science . Design-based research . Diverse elementary learners . Educational technology
As Rakow (1985) showcased 30 years ago, increasing the amount of science instruction among primary and secondary students across demographics does not necessarily lead to more favorable attitudes toward the discipline. However, given that Osborne et al.’s (2003) seminal review implicated the importance of attitudes toward science in relation to science achievement based on the type of instruction students receive, which has been more recently affirmed by Aguilera and Perales-Palacios’s (2020) updated review, differences in the type of science instruction students are exposed to is paramount, particularly for underserved populations. Thus, improving students’ attitudes in science is a central goal of the field. In this research, we argue for a context-specific relationality—a “cultural view foreground[ing] how learning is a relational activity in terms of time (past, present, future), [and] place (previous and current home)” (Calabrese Barton Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-020-09849-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Phillip A. Boda [email protected] 1
Stanford University, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-3096, USA
and Tan 2018, p. 766). In this way, science education can increase content relevancy as a “best practice” designed for all learners (Hayes and Deyhle 2001). With this view of “science education for all,” we contend that such real-world connections between school, science, and society in terms of student attitudes (e.g., Zacharia and Barton 2004) can be fostered by leveraging design features in novel educat
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