Effects of virtual reality enriched science laboratory activities on pre-service science teachers' science process skills

Innovative instructional technologies, especially virtual reality devices, are becoming more prominent and feasible in science education. Concerning science laboratories, activities enriched with virtual reality technology have the potential to make unobservable phenomena accessible in any school. This virtual reality technology has the potential to lead in a new milestone in terms of acquisition of the science process skills, not only in secondary school students but also in the training of pre-service science teachers. This mixed-method study aimed to investigate the effect of virtual reality enriched laboratory activities' effects on the science process skills of pre-service science teachers in Turkey. The pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental intervention was conducted with 54 3rd-grade pre-service science teachers enrolled in a state university in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. There were 24 participants in the experimental and 30 participants in the control group. The science process skills test was administered to both groups before and after the six-week-long intervention. Also, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six participants from the experimental group after the intervention process. Even though the groups did not differ at the end of the intervention, the increase of the scores in the experimental group was found to be statistically significant, concerning the overall test scores and the sub-dimension of Experimenting. Furthermore, qualitative findings signify a prominent emphasis on Observing. The potential causations and derived implications are discussed.