Chapter 2: Virtual Reality, Learning Scenarios, and Teaching Science to Learners from Other Cultures: Whose Reality?

This chapter proposes that technology can be used to design culturally sensitive and authentic science education, but not all technology is suitable or desirable. Virtual worlds (VWs), however, possess many of the technical affordances and learning benefits that could be used to enhance the teaching of science to learners from different cultures. VWs, by definition, reflect the cultures or subcultures of their designers. Consequently, when VWs are used to teach across cultures it will usually require some form of “border crossing” for the learners. In particular, the cultural gap between a learners’ everyday world and the world of science can result in unauthentic and ineffective teaching and learning. The world of pedagogy, on the other hand, should mediate between the everyday world and the world of science. It performs a critical function of correctly aligning the worlds, and in doing so helps to prevent misconceptions and to identify and explore alternative explanations. How to design the pedagogical world is discussed both in theoretical and applied terms. The theoretical aspect is based on Mayes and Fowler’s (1999) learning framework and its various enhancements (e.g., Fowler, 2014), and has a strong emphasis on incorporating pedagogical principles into the technical design of the VW. The applied aspects focus on the use of learning scenarios as the bridging mechanism between the worlds.