Virtual Field Trips in K-12 Classroom Teaching: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This systematic review examines the pedagogical gap of how VFTs are adopted and integrated in K-12 classroom teaching and learning. Specifically, it focuses on the grade levels and subject areas, learning outcomes and pedagogical activities involved VFTs at elementary and secondary levels. The results of this review show the current usage of VFTs occurs more often in science and history-related classes for secondary students, mainly due to VFTs' affordances in offering access to unreachable exploration, visualization of complex concepts, and time change observation. It also reveals that the implementation of VFTs can lead to positive cognitive and affective learning gains when a variety of carefully designed pedagogical activities are used, among which scaffolding and procedural strategies are highlighted. The results also demonstrated that high levels of peer-to-peer interaction coincide with high levels of teacher-to-student interaction, however, high teacher-to-student interaction may not necessarily lead to high peer-to-peer interaction, indicating that need to design specific activities to promote student interaction among themselves. Thus, future research and practice may explore how VFTs can be used to enhance higher order thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis, and teachers are to be empowered in the processes of VFT creation and adoption.