The influences of virtual reality (VR) educational apps on children’s literacy learning at home: a case study

Abstract

The advances in technology have shifted many aspects of children’s lives and development, such as education and entertainment. One technology trend is virtual reality (VR) headsets; there are 25% and 18% of children in the USA and the UK aged 8-12 experiencing this technology respectively (Yamada-Rice et al., 2017). As a result, academics and practitioners should reconsider the way and contents of searching with children in this current era due to technological generation development. Thus, this has motivated the researcher to explore the literacy practices of children playing VR educational games in the home environment. The research was also meant to recognise the general experiences, both the positive and negative aspects. In addition to that, parents’ views of these new technology games were generated. This study was conducted with three families, consisting of two girls and a boy aged between 5 and 6-years-old, and their mothers. They were all interviewed, and the children were observed while they were playing VR games. A thematic analysis, in addition to a multimodal approach, was adopted to analyse the data. The findings revealed that most children were engaged in many literacy practices while they were playing with VR games. For instance, they were decoding texts, understanding the meaning of pictures, following the oral instructions and interacting with people surrounding them regarding the games’ contents. Most of them were engaged with VR games and other kinds of digital apps, such as YouTube. However, the children needed some technical support and monitoring. Most of them had positive opinions regarding the VR games and the other technology apps and they see the benefits of them. However, all of them were concerned with its disadvantages regarding health issues and the overuse of these devices. Using VR headsets with children under five years old provided a significant contribution to current knowledge. An implication for the field is that children should be exposed to digital and non-digital methods of learning in the home and at school, according to their interests in order to avoid gaps in children’s computing skills in the digital age.