The advanced visualisation and interactive capabilities make immersive virtual reality (IVR) attractive for educators to investigate its educational benefits. This research reviewed 64 studies published in 2016–2020 to understand how science educators designed, implemented, and evaluated IVR-based learning. The immersive design features (sensory, actional, narrative, and social) originally suggested by Dede provided the framework for the analysis of IVR designs. Educators commonly adopted IVR to better aid visualisation of abstract concepts and enhance learning experience. IVR applications tended to have sensory and actional features, leaving out narrative and social features. Learning theories did not appear to play a strong role in the design, implementation, and evaluation of IVR-based learning. Participants generally reported their IVR experiences as positive on engagement and motivation but the learning outcomes were mixed. No particular immersive design features were identified to result in better learning outcomes. Careful consideration of the immersive design features in alignment with the rationales for adopting IVR and evaluation methods may contribute to more productive investigations of the educational benefits of IVR to improve science teaching and learning.

This article presents the development, description, application, and discussion of an analytical framework to examine students’ drawings of scientific concepts and processes. Student-generated representation, particularly drawing, is increasingly emphasised as an important learning strategy to help students reason, explain, and demonstrate their scientific thinking and understanding. Although this strategy would require a greater need to understand what students are drawing, there are currently few frameworks that can support researchers and educators in analysing student-generated drawings. Based on the theory of social semiotics and an empirical data corpus of students’ drawings from two research projects, we developed an analytical framework to describe and categorise a broad range of ideas and relationships that students are representing through their drawings in physics and chemistry. The application of this framework will be illustrated by two analytical examples of students’ drawings in the topics of rotational moment and chemical bonding. The first example analysed students’ drawings in relation to their accompanying written explanations, while the second example analysed the students’ drawings in conjunction with the occurring classroom discourse. Through the illustration, the research and pedagogical applications and usefulness of this analytical framework will be discussed.