Students developing representational competence as producers with and of augmented reality in science

Abstract

This research aims to examine how augmented reality (AR) can be used in lower secondary science education. The focus is on outcomes as perceived by students and teachers from 3 rounds of piloting AR-resources, in the third round supporting students as producers of AR. Data sources are teacher interviews, questionnaires and video/observation from Danish, Norwegian and Spanish classrooms. Findings point to positive possibilities for supporting students’ representational competencies, however dependent of the teachers’ thorough use of scaffolding. Teachers refer to student learning of the science content through active engagement in technology-supported inquiry. Students report a high level of outcomes, e.g., by experiencing a sense of presence in the science phenomena and “seeing the invisible”. The piloting with students as AR-producers in particular revealed affordances for their creative and collaborative use of digital resources (21st century skills), stimulating also dialogue about ICT from their everyday life as produced by someone.

Keywords

• Augmented reality
• science inquiry
• representational competence
• exploratory talk
• dialogue