Impact of 360°VR on Pre-Service Teachers' Empathy—Taking Educational Equity as an example

Abstract

Under the goal of promoting a more equitable, inclusive, and resilient education system, how to use innovative learning technologies to develop teachers' empathy is a hot research topic in the field of educational equity. Recent research has emphasized the potential of 360°VR to bolster empathy. The underlying mechanisms of such outcome are, however, underexplored. The present study applied three types of educational equity learning materials, including 360°VR, 2D video, and graphic, to pre-service teachers' empathy development. Randomly assigned participants viewed a documentary featuring a group of children living in rural and urban areas in a 360°VR or 2D video or graphic format, and measures of empathy (in terms of perspective taking and empathic concern), immersion, enjoyment and discomfort were collected. Results indicated that the virtual reality experience resulted in a higher level of empathy but this effect was not significant in terms of perspective taking. Immersion is the process of linking virtual reality experience with empathy, and 360°VR brings higher immersion by triggering the illusion of spatial presence which was associated with higher levels of empathy. Implications of the study include: it is feasible to use 360°VR to develop teacher empathy training, but needs to be combined with effective instructional activity design and scaffolding design; using empathy as an entry point can develop a two-way structure for teachers' cognitive and affective cultivation of educational equity; and teachers' empathy cultivation needs to build a long-term, incremental cultivation system.