IMMERSION, EXPERIMENTATION, AND OBSERVATION: EFFECTS OF THREE LABORATORY ENVIRONMENTS ON GIFTED STUDENTS’ CHEMICAL CHANGE KNOWLEDGE AND SCIENCE ATTITUDES
IMMERSION, EXPERIMENTATION, AND OBSERVATION: EFFECTS OF THREE LABORATORY ENVIRONMENTS ON GIFTED STUDENTS’ CHEMICAL CHANGE KNOWLEDGE AND SCIENCE ATTITUDES

Summary/Abstract: Laboratory environments offer varying degrees of physical interaction, immersion, control, and guidance, yet the impact of these differences on gifted students’ knowledge and attitudes towards science classes and laboratories remains unclear. This study compared the effects of direct immersive virtual reality (IVR), a physical laboratory, and teacher-modelled observational virtual reality on gifted sixth-grade students’ chemical change knowledge and attitudes towards science classes and laboratories. A three-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used with 66 gifted sixth-graders (39 girls, 27 boys). Gifted students learned through direct IVR, a physical laboratory, or observational IVR based on teacher modelling. All groups received the same content, procedures, worksheets, and teaching time. Data were collected using the Chemical Change Knowledge Test and the Attitude toward Science Course and Laboratories Scale, then analysed through a 3 × 2 mixed-design ANOVA. The interaction between learning environment and time was significant for all variables. The physical laboratory group showed greater gains in attitudes towards learning science at school, science self-concept, and overall attitudes towards science. Observational IVR produced knowledge gains comparable to those of the physical laboratory group, but smaller gains in attitudes. Overall, the findings indicate that different laboratory environments support different learning outcomes among gifted sixth-grade students.

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