Elisa Serrano-Ausejo has written an article in the journal Digital Education Review.
My study examines how twelve history teachers perceive the affordances and constraints of immersive virtual reality (iVR) and how those perceptions together with their own digital competence, shape the goals and designs of their classroom activities. Using Affordance Theory and Leontiev’s Activity Theory, I contrast emotional-empathic uses of iVR with its capacity to enhance analytical historical thinking (HT).
iVR is spreading rapidly in K-12 settings, yet most evaluations focus on motivation or empathy rather than on whether the medium actually advances disciplinary competencies such as source criticism, multiperspectivity or evidence-based reasoning. Understanding teachers’ real-world strategies and worries is important if we want iVR to become a substantive and not merely spectacular technology for history education.
Yes. This article forms one strand of my broader research about iVR uses and role in history education, which includes earlier work on iVR environments and forthcoming studies on student outcomes.
Findings show that today and considering the state of the art of the technology and teachers’ training, iVR’s impact depends less on the technology itself and more on how teachers perceive and scaffold it. High-competence teachers design complex, student-created tasks; others use iVR mainly as a visual hook. All participants value immersion for engagement, but many fear that poorly scaffolded content oversimplifies narratives and encourages passive consumption.
The most surprising finding was the high digital competence of some teachers and their advanced use of iVR to teach history through AI, virtual museums, and student projects. They aimed to modernize history education while building digital skills. However, they also feared narrative oversimplification and lack of critical thinking, similar to textbook issues. Surprisingly, aligning these innovations with the curriculum proved difficult, and even these high-tech teachers faced fears of failure and complains from peers and superiors.
Absolutely. Interviewing teachers across different countries offered a rare and refreshing look at innovations still largely invisible. Hearing first-hand how a headset transformed their history teaching, and their views on its impact on learning, gave me a new perspective on what innovative history education looks like today.
Serrano-Ausejo, E. (2025). Exploring teachers’ views on using immersive virtual reality for teaching history : [Explorando las opiniones de los docentes sobre el uso de la realidad virtual inmersiva para la enseñanza de la historia]. Digital Education Review, (47), 108–126. https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2025.47.108-126
