Abstract:

Due to the lack of supporting experimental equipment or environment in many schools, in primary and secondary schools most scientific knowledge is still conveyed through the traditional "word of mouth” (Li, 2003). This makes students not only fail to learn systematic knowledge, but also form misconceptions about the nature of science, which affects the effectiveness of science teaching. Augmented reality technology provides a new tool for teaching natural science. In this article, a total of 52 studies from 36 papers were filtered to discuss the overall effects of AR technology on the effectiveness of natural science teaching in primary and secondary schools. Compared the different effects between cognitive and affective outcomes. And the effects of different levels of teaching methods, experiment time, and resource types were examined. The results found that AR technology had a positive overall effect on the effectiveness of teaching natural science (d=0.562, p<.001). The effect of AR technology application with natural science teaching activities on the affective dimension (d=0.755) was better than the effect on the cognitive dimension (d=0.505). There were no significant effects of different experiment time and types of resources on the results, and there were significant differences in the effects of different teaching methods and academic period on teaching effectiveness. Therefore, AR technology applied to natural science teaching in primary and secondary schools has better teaching effects compared to traditional resources, which can promote students' improvement in cognitive dimension and affective dimension, and it is important to choose the appropriate teaching method and academic segments based on the subject content to maximize the advantages of technology for teaching.

Keywords:

Augmented reality, meta-analysis, natural science, primary and secondary school, teaching effectiveness.