Abstract

The combination of globalization and digitalization emphasizes the importance of media-related and intercultural competencies of teacher educators and pre-service teachers. This article reports on the initial prototypical implementation of a pedagogical concept to foster such competencies of pre-service teachers. The proposed pedagogical concept utilizes a social VR framework since related work on the characteristics of VR indicate that this medium is particularly well suited for intercultural professional development processes. The development is integrated into a larger design-based-research approach that develops a theory-guided and empirically grounded professional development concept for teacher educators with a special focus on TETC 8. TETC provide a suitable competence framework capable of aligning both requirements for media-related as well as intercultural competencies. In an exploratory study with student teachers we designed, implemented and evaluated a pedagogical concept. Reflection reports were analyzed qualitatively to gain insights into factors that facilitate or hinder the implementation of the immersive learning scenario as well as into the participants evaluation of their learning experience. The results show that our proposed pedagogical concept is particularly suitable for promoting the experience of social presence, agency and empathy in the group.

Citation

Foerster, K., Hein, R., Grafe, S., Latoschik, M.E. & Wienrich, C. (2021). Fostering Intercultural Competencies in Initial Teacher Education. Implementation of Educational Design Prototypes using a Social VR Environment. In T. Bastiaens (Ed.), Proceedings of Innovate Learning Summit 2021 (pp. 95-108). Online, United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved May 29, 2023 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/220276/.

© 2021 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)