Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how the creativity of pupils and teachers is nurtured through the use of a virtual world (VW) within a sociotechnical network affecting pupils’ learning in a pilot secondary school. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is the result of a pluri-disciplinary systemic analysis involving didactics, sociology, psychology and management science on an individual, collective and systemic scale. This participatory action research is based on interviews and systematic observations in class, in-world and in the global ecosystem. Linguistic and multimodal analysis is applied to the data, through teacher monographs that hint at the teachers’ activity. Findings Pupils’ and teachers’ creativity appeared to be anchored within four main interdependent nurturing conditions the personal inclinations and professional interactions in the sociotechnical network sustaining the VW; a creative regulation allowing compromises with the institutional constraints of pedagogical control; avatars and 3 D boundary objects that act as a motor of teachers-pupils inquiry and creativity; the sociotechnical network that contributes, through the actors’ play, to bringing the organisational rules of the school towards an innovation trajectory, that in turns mediates success in the use and the adoption of the new technology. Research limitations/implications Although this is a study within a specific school, the findings can be put to use by other pedagogical teams who would wish to integrate a VW to re-engage pupils. Practical implications The participatory design processes taking place within a sociotechnical network support teachers in the building of Virtual World scenarios negotiated with researchers and start-up developers. Social implications The pedagogical use of a virtual world opens new learning engagement opportunities for the pupils through enhanced experiential learning and sustains the transformation of teachers’ professionality. Originality/value The authors’ approach differs from the previous educational VW literature, in that they integrate the teachers’ creativity and their pedagogical scripts into their study, within a systemic approach, thus requiring a wider theoretical framework, necessary for understanding the building of strategies and knowledge that foster teachers’ and pupils’ creativity in educational settings using a VW.
The dissemination of innovative pedagogies in French secondary education, under the effect of both educational policies and the spontaneous action of teachers, raises the question of the socio-cognitive and material conditions of the design, appropriation, and use of a 3D VW learning space in school. To answer this question, we study the design of a learning space using a 3D VW and the interactions that emerge between the different actors involved in techno-pedagogical innovation. The case study included 22 5th grade students. The videos recorded concern the use of a scenario-based 3D VW for Mathematics, French and Second Language. The analysis of these scenarios based on co-presence, remote-learning and autonomy retrace the material and socio-cognitive conditions of a changing learning space that co-evolves with identities and the teachers’ intent to create meaning within a hybridised institutional and organisational framework.
We present a study of avatarial interactions in a pedagogical virtual 3D world. We find that there are variations as regards the three dimensions of immersion, symbolic, bodily and social, according to the academic profile of the pupils. The class with a lower mastery of academic skills in maths, French, English and a second language, was found to be more involved with the symbolic immersion aspects, and less with aspects of bodily and social immersion, whereas the class group with a higher mastery of academic skills presented the opposite features. When merging the two class groups, it was the medium high score group that was found to present salient features, namely high indicators as far as the three forms of immersion were concerned.
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