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Virtual Reality: a Tool for Preservice Science Teachers to Put Theory into Practice

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Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate, compare, and characterize interactive VR-based preservice science teacher clinical teaching environments with those of real-life teaching environments. Fifty-four college-aged students were assigned randomly to either real-life conditions or VR conditions. The main effect of the VR condition versus real-life was not statistically significant in terms of the retrospective engagement survey, psychological measures, and composite neuroimaging. This finding suggests that use of VR, in terms of the realism of the environment for the preservice science teachers allowed them to learn from modeled real-life situations for transfer of skills from VR to classroom use.

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Correspondence to Richard Lamb.

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The authors have received all appropriate institutional research ethics committee approvals and have complied with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. The authors have no conflict of interest to declare. No funding was obtained for this research.

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This study has been approved by the appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committees. Informed consent/assent was obtained from all participants. This study has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

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Lamb, R., Etopio, E.A. Virtual Reality: a Tool for Preservice Science Teachers to Put Theory into Practice. J Sci Educ Technol 29, 573–585 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-020-09837-5

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