13: Teaching Sustainability Through Democratic Pedagogy in a Virtual Reality School

In this manuscript we explore a brand-new virtual-reality school, Virtual Reality Academy (VRA), and assess its implementation of principles of discussion-oriented democratic education in a high school science lesson on sustainability. The VRA research is connected to the Social Science Education Consortium’s 2024 conference theme five, empowering and engaging youth in work toward just and sustainable societies to prepare young global citizens. We investigate VRA’s empowerment of youth and preparation of young, global citizens. This manuscript builds on prior work on democratic education that the authors conducted in a different school context.