Project Outputs
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EARLI 2025
Teachers hold conscious and unconscious beliefs about their students which may reflect biased or stereotypical understandings of diverse student groups. These beliefs shape how teachers interact with students, ultimately contributing to the extent to which students reach their academic potential. Virtual reality (VR) has been billed as an ‘empathy machine’, enabling teachers to take the perspective of their students. It is argued that by embodying an ethnic minority student and experiencing acts of implicit racism and microaggressions ‘first-hand’, teachers will be more likely to reflect on and change their beliefs and practices to be more inclusive.
This paper will present the findings of a pilot study which aims to evaluate the efficacy of a newly developed VR scenario. Developed based on research, the VR scenario takes participants through a school day of a Māori intermediate school student within the Aotearoa New Zealand education system, navigating a range of social interactions, some of which have been designed to explicitly simulate the experience of being the target of racism. Both quantitative measures of teachers’ attitudes and beliefs and qualitative data collected via focus groups will be analysed to determine how participants engage with the VR scenario. The findings will provide some of the first insights into how a VR embodiment experience impacts teachers’ beliefs. The findings will shed light on how teachers experience, accept, and reflect on the embodiment experience and relate it to their practice. Further, a discussion on how VR can be utilised in educational spaces to combat biased teacher expectations is presented.
Meyer, F., Rudd, G., Smith, J., Rubie-Davies, C., Amos, M., Baker, R., O’Regan, H., & O’Connell, P. (2025, August 25-29). Using Virtual Reality to Increase Empathy and Combat Bias in the Classroom: A Pilot Study [Paper presentation]. EARLI 2025, Austria. https://www.earli.org/events/earli2025#section-programme
IAIR & IACCP 2025
This paper reports on the first stage of a 3-year intervention study, in which we used existing research and newly collected data to design a virtual reality (VR) scenario to disrupt biased teacher expectations. The VR scenario takes participants through a school day of a Māori intermediate school student within the Aotearoa New Zealand education system, navigating a range of social interactions, some of which have been designed to explicitly simulate the experience of being the target of racism. By integrating these acts of implicit bias and microaggressions into the scenario we aimed to develop an impactful tool as part of an anti-bias training programme for teachers.
While VR scenarios have been developed to enable people to embody a person from an ethnic minority group, including in a classroom setting, they are few and far between. Furthermore, there is a paucity of literature that outlines the theoretical, ethical, and practical considerations involved in developing a VR scenario of this nature. By drawing on our own experience of developing a VR scenario to combat bias in the classroom, this paper will present the key considerations that we navigated and present the outcomes of these decisions. We will also reflect on the process of translating research into a VR scenario aimed at combating biased teacher expectations.
VR technology is becoming more accessible and offers new ways to facilitate intergroup contact and reduce bias. This is important in classrooms where teachers’ expectations of their students influence student educational experiences and outcomes. By integrating a VR scenario into a bespoke anti-bias training programme, we aim to promote more culturally responsive teaching and therefore make education in Aotearoa New Zealand a more inclusive space. The development of this VR scenario is part of a wider project that will assess the efficacy of an anti-bias training programme that includes a VR scenario to determine the extent to which this approach positively impacts the beliefs and behaviours. It is intended that this paper can act as a touchpoint for other researchers interested in translating bias research into a VR scenario that promotes social reflection and change.
Rudd, G., Meyer, F., Smith, J., O’Regan, H., O’Connell, P., Amos, M., Baker, R., & Rubie-Davies, C. (2025, June 26 – July 1). Designing a virtual reality scenario to combat bias in the classroom: Considerations and reflections [Paper presentation]. IAIR & IACCP Conference, Brisbane, QLD, Australia. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/iaccp_regional/2/