Abstract:

Global Education (GE) is a field that aspires to prepare students across the world to be able to address the urgent, uncertain, and complex global issues of the 21st century. This involves teaching students about the various political, economic, and social structures that generate and strengthen global inequality. This paper demonstrates how Extended Reality (XR) technologies’ unique capability to immerse students in interactions, activities, and identities that are not possible in the real world can lead to transformative learning. If students’ learning is transformative, it can help promote global equality since transformative learning incites students to critically reflect on their own ways of life and personal beliefs. Such learning can lead to individual behavioral change as well as to collective social movements.

This paper draws on previous literature and analyses of various studies to show the affordances of XR for teaching GE (i.e. global knowledge, skills, values and attitudes, and behavior) as a means of promoting global equality. XR experiences are well positioned to allow students to examine the interconnectedness and interdependence between global and local issues. Such experiences can also allow students to better grasp global issues that are abstract, time-delayed, and distant from their daily lives. By using XR technologies, students can “travel,” regardless of their political or economic power, around the world and obtain authentic experiences of various cultures. Students can also use XR technologies to capture and share the nuances of their ways of life from their own perspective. Furthermore, through virtual environments, facilitated by XR technologies, students can learn how to positively interact with individuals from different backgrounds. Lastly, XR technologies can allow students to inhabit different identities and as such explore power dynamics. This can induce the affective process of empathy and result in students developing more tolerance, respect, and appreciation for other cultural identities.

While the findings of the paper merit the use of XR technologies for GE, there are significant barriers and limitations in terms of access, content, and delivery that need to be addressed. Collaborative research among scholars worldwide as well as extensive empirical research will be necessary before any XR technology is implemented as a GE learning tool.

Keywords:

global education, extended reality, transformative learning, global equality.