Virtual reality (VR) in science classrooms has the potential to enhance students’ learning by bridging the knowledge in the learners’ communities with science instruction. When virtual environments reflect students’ culture, it has the potential to influence their attitudes toward the value of science in their community. This qualitative study examined student reflections on learning science using virtual reality software with embedded culturally relevant design elements. After learning how to use this technology, fifty-eight 4th and 5th grade students from urban schools in Northern California were interviewed about their experiences learning science. Students explained how learning science through virtual worlds influenced their perceptions of how science mattered in their lives. Students explained the influence of CRP–VR in impacting how they saw the value of science in their communities. Implications of this research highlight the need for educational stakeholders to consider the relevance of integrating culturally relevant perspectives in VR technologies. This approach has the potential to position learners and their communities as bearers of scientific knowledge and thus providing a more dynamic learning experience.

Although the population of science teachers in the US lacks diversity, the technology used to teach science should be diverse and culturally connected. Culturally relevant frameworks for science call for science teaching to be situated in meaningful contexts. This study calls for the integration of CRP and situated cognition perspectives as a means of designing pedagogically effective virtual reality. This mixed-methods study explored N = 444 students changes in attitudes after experiencing VR lessons on an attitude survey and qualitative short answers. We found that all students who used the VR improved their attitudes towards science. We also found that students who used the CRP designed VR developed a conscious and politically aware application of science. The results suggest that educational technology should carefully consider how using CRP-based approaches can have both cognitive and cultural implications of students’ learning.

This mixed-methods study examines the implications of using the tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) to design an elementary science lesson grounded in four virtual reality (VR) videos. Given the need for additional understandings of how elementary science educators can infuse cultural relevance alongside content development, this study illuminates how designing for CRP can utilize VR as a pedagogical platform to bridge science instruction and students’ lived experiences. Using pre- and post-attitudinal surveys (n=145) and post interviews (n=48), we examined students’ perceptions of a single virtual reality lesson about energy and food chains. The data suggest that learning through a CRP-based VR design (CRP-VR) enhanced students’ perception of the connection between the science content and its socio-political application to social justice issues. Implications highlight the potential of leveraging VR technology as a means to provide science instruction that explicitly affords students the opportunity to connect content learning and social action.

How people learn engineering has emerged as a core focus within engineering education in the past decade. Scholars now recognize that people learn engineering in diverse ways and that the context of learning (e.g., cultural, historical, formal or informal education, or workplace settings) significantly shapes learning processes and outcomes. In this chapter, authors review research from learning sciences and engineering education research to highlight considerations of power and culture as they intersect with knowledge, identity, agency, language practices, discourse, and sociomateriality. Through a discussion of these topics and specific example studies, the authors elaborate on critical cultural analysis and demonstrate its utilities for examining, elucidating, and informing learning practices. The chapter is not intended to function as a guidebook for all aspects of critical cultural analysis; instead, the chapter demonstrates new interdisciplinary possibilities that can facilitate transforming engineering education research with a more nuanced and productive view of learning.