Augmented reality simulations in science education for questioning and explaining geoscience phenomena

Abstract

One of the purposes of science education is to progress from students’ initial ideas about daily phenomena to explanatory scientific models. However, explaining concepts in scientific language is not always easy for children, as many accepted scientific models involve non-visible structures. Augmented reality (AR) superimposes virtual objects onto the physical environment in real time, enabling learners to engage with representations of phenomena that would otherwise be unobservable. A significant challenge in Chile is that nearly 70% of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds fail to explain everyday phenomena using scientific concepts. Furthermore, there is a research gap in analysing the pedagogical interactions that mediate AR-supported learning in primary education for constructing explanations. We provided tablet-based AR simulations of the Earth’s layers, earthquakes, and volcanoes, and used mixed methods to analyze interactions in three classrooms located in seismic zones vulnerable to these geological phenomena. The participants were 69 fourth graders and three teachers. Special attention was given to the teachers’ guiding questions and their role in facilitating the construction of explanatory models. The study aimed to characterize teacher and student questions posed during AR-enhanced geoscience lessons and to identify which teacher question types promote scientific explanations in primary students. The results indicate that classroom interactions primarily included clarifications, prompted questions, and nonverbal actions such as pointing at the tablet screen. The questions that successfully mediated the explanations aimed to foster a conceptual understanding of the underlying causes and connections between the phenomena, rather than the device’s operation. Metacognitive pedagogical questions played a key role in evaluating the learning gains and promoting deeper reasoning. We discuss these practices in the context of primary school science to inform further research on the use of immersive technology to learn about real-world phenomena. We conclude that the potential of AR resides not solely in its visual fidelity, but in its capacity to evoke pedagogical interactions for sense-making, and that a personal connection with the phenomena complements the technology’s use.