简介

Educational Technology & Society (ET&S) is an open-access academic journal published quarterly (January, April, July, and October) since October 1998. ET&S has achieved its purposes of providing an international forum for open access scientific dialogue for developers, educators and researchers to foster the development of research in educational technology. Thanks to all the Authors, Reviewers and Readers, the journal has enjoyed tremendous success.

ET&S has established a solid and stable editorial office where the Editors-in-Chief aims to promote innovative educational technology research based on empirical inquiries to echo the pedagogical essentials of learning in the real world—lifelong learning, competency-orientation, and multimodal literacy in the 21st century.

ET&S publishes research that well bridges the pedagogy and practice in advanced technology for evidence-based and meaningful educational application. The focus of ET&S is not only technology per se, but rather issues related to the process continuum of learning, teaching, and assessment and how they are affected or enhanced using technologies. The empirical research about how technology can be used to overcome the existing problems in the frontline of local education with findings that can be applied to the global spectrum is also welcome. However, papers with only descriptions of the results obtained from self-report surveys without systematic or empirical data or any analysis on learning outcomes or processes are not favorable to be included in ET&S.

Guest Editors

Di Zou The Education University of Hong Kong

Junjie Gavin Wu (Corresponding guest editor) Shenzhen Technology University

Jozef Colpaert University of Antwerp

Minjuan Wang San Diego State University

Focus, Scope, and Rationale

With the emergence of new technologies including extended reality, blockchain, and generative artificial intelligence, we have entered a brave new world of the Metaverse (Wang et al., 2022; Wu et al., 2023). In particular, virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a powerful technology for teachers to create a simulated learning experience for learners, opening up a new arena for teachers to revolutionize their teaching practices (Chen et al., 2021; Guo & Lan, 2023). Existing literature has explored the diverse use of VR from learners’ perspectives, pointing to the unique features of VR in education, such as immersion, interactivity, authenticity, and motivation (e.g., Song et al., 2022; Tai & Chen, 2021), though a number of challenges were reported as well when using VR in learning, covering aspects of health concerns, psychological engagements, and technical hiccups (e.g., Wu et al., 2021).Yet, to fully realize the potential of virtual reality in education, there is an urgent need to provide greater effort to support pre- and in-service teachers to agentively select, innovatively apply, and critically evaluate the use of VR in their teaching practices (Lan, 2020). Kessler (2021) remarked that teacher preparation for using technology in teaching is “generally inadequate, insufficient, or inappropriate” (p. ii). A great line of factors poses threats to current teacher education. For example, learning is no longer confined to the bricks-and-mortar space, whereas much of the discourse surrounding teacher education remains focused on in-class teaching (Richards, 2015). Effective ways to support student VR learning in the wilds, for example, VR games, are hardly discussed in our traditional teacher education programs. In addition, the lack of robust theoretical, conceptual, and pedagogical support has kept challenging teachers to effectively integrate emerging technologies into their practices (Colpaert, 2018). Also, the lack of simulated, immersive teaching experience has prevented pre-service teachers from applying learning theories into practice, however, the use of VR could enhance teaching skills and test out different ways of teaching in a less anxious, but safer environment (Chen, 2022). Moreover, due to the novelty of VR, we are yet to see more future empirical studies focusing on the cultivation of global citizenship (Gruenewald & Witteborn, 2022). Particularly, the various soft skills such as empathy, critical thinking, and adaptability, are of prime importance in contemporary society to cope with ethical challenges such as school bully.Against this backdrop, this special issue aims to prepare pre- and in-service teachers for “diversity, unpredictability, and change” (Hauck & Kurek, 2017, p. 283) so that they can become more confident and make better judgments about when, where, and how to use technology in their future language teaching. The special issue sets the aim to contribute to the increasing body of literature on the applications of VR in teacher education. Without limiting the scope to a specific field of education, we welcome authors from all disciplinary backgrounds to share their successes and challenges. By highlighting the potential affordances and challenges associated with using VR in teacher education, this special issue will advance our understanding and update the traditional practices of preparing pre- and in-service teachers for future-oriented teaching.

Topics

The call for papers aims to solicit well-written and sound research in the following areas. Topics include but not limited to:

This special issue will be of great value to researchers, research students, and practitioners who are interested in leveraging the power of VR in teacher education. The papers included in this issue will be particularly valuable to teacher educators, enabling them to improve the quality of their pre- and in-service teacher training across the disciplines.

How to Submit your Manuscript

All submissions of the Special Issue should comply with the Author Guidelines of Educational Technology & Society (ET&S), available on https://www.j-ets.net/author_guide. The submissions to the special issue should fit within the scope of ET&S as described in the Aims and Scope of ET&S (https://www.j-ets.net/journal_info/scope). Of the utmost importance is that ET&S publishes the research that well bridges the pedagogy and practice in advanced technology for evidence-based and meaningful educational applications. Papers collected and analyzed only self-reported data that obtained from interview or questionnaire survey without a meaningful educational treatment are NOT within the scope of ET&S.

Please submit your anonymous manuscript and title page using the submission system available https://www.jets.net/submit. When submitting your manuscript, please ensure that you have selected “Virtual Reality in Teacher Education: Innovations, Opportunities, and Challenges.”

Important Dates