Immersive Virtual Reality to improve competence to manage classroom climate in secondary schools

This article describes the Didascalia Virtual-Classroom system, an immersive virtual reality environment (IVRE) that allows teachers to experience and reflect on conflict management in the secondary school classroom. In the context of a master's degree at a Spanish university, 162 preservice teachers (67.3% female, age average = 27.3) participated in a Responsible Research and Innovation experience to assess IVRE usefulness in fostering learning about conflict management in preservice teacher education, while reflecting about their perceived self-efficacy on this teaching competence. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and focus groups and subsequently analysed using statistical tests and content analysis. Our results confirm that preservice teachers perceive limitations in their self-efficacy for classroom management. On the other hand, the thematic analysis of the focus groups allowed us to identify opportunities and advantages offered by this tool to foster the learning of conflict management competence. Overall, participants perceived that the Didascalia-VC environment could be very useful in initial training and highlighted the immersive power and realistic content as the main advantageous features. In addition, all participants recognized that the experiences provided by this IVRE can foster reflective and critical learning about effective classroom management. At the end of the article, some ideas for further research and improvement of the development of this tool are suggested, as well as its pedagogic potentials for use in the master's degree for secondary school teachers currently being carried out in Spanish universities.