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Language teachers’ beliefs about using high-immersion virtual reality

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Abstract

Using Virtual Reality (VR) in educational contexts is becoming increasingly common. The ability of VR to provide authentic learning experiences is making it a particularly promising platform for language learning, but the research on its acceptance among language teachers is scarce. This paper reports the results obtained from a large-scale (N = 2,176) survey on language teachers’ beliefs toward the use of VR for education. The survey explored the relationships between language teachers’ beliefs about using VR in a classroom and their teaching experiences, such as previous use of VR for teaching, their stages of VR technology integration, and their preferred teaching approaches. Furthermore, the survey yielded answers on the relationship between the availability of information technology (IT) personnel in language teachers’ schools. We found that practical knowledge and past experiences of incorporating VR in teaching were crucial determinants of teachers’ positive beliefs, showing that teachers were motivated to adopt VR technology in their classrooms if they had previously used it. Language teachers’ favorable beliefs were also positively correlated with the availability of IT personnel in their schools.

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Acknowledgements

As this paper was a part of Dr. Dhimolea’s dissertation, we want to acknowledge the invaluable guidance and advice provided by her dissertation committee members, Drs Lin Lin, Lauren Eutsler, and Michael Spector, who have greatly contributed to the quality of the early version of this paper. Furthermore, we would like to thank Dmitry Igorevich Zemtsov and Alexander Sergeevich Klenin for their help in organizing data collection.

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  1. University of North Texas, 3940 N. Elm Street, G159, Denton, TX, 76207, USA

    Regina Kaplan-Rakowski & Tetyana Kucher Dhimolea

  2. Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Education Building A35, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Iuliia Sergeevna Khukalenko

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  1. Regina Kaplan-Rakowski
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  2. Tetyana Kucher Dhimolea
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Kaplan-Rakowski, R., Dhimolea, T.K. & Khukalenko, I.S. Language teachers’ beliefs about using high-immersion virtual reality. Educ Inf Technol 28, 12505–12525 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11686-9

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