Virtual Environments: Issues and Opportunities for Researching Inclusive
Educational Practices
Researching Learning in Virtual Worlds, (2010)Abstract
This chapter argues that virtual environments offer new research areas
for those concerned with inclusive education. Further, it proposes
that they also present opportunities for developing increasingly
inclusive research processes. This chapter considers how researchers
might approach researching some of these affordances. It discusses
the relationship between specific features of inclusive pedagogy,
derived from an international systematic literature review, and the
affordances of different forms of virtual characters and environments.
Examples are drawn from research in Second LifeTM (SL), virtual tutors
and augmented reality. In doing this, the chapter challenges a simplistic
notion of isolated physical and virtual worlds and, in the context
of inclusion, between the practice of research and the research topic
itself. There are a growing number of virtual worlds in which identified
educational activities are taking place, or whose activities are
being noted for their educational merit. These encompasses non-themed
worlds such as SL and Active Worlds, game based worlds such as World
of Warcraft and Runescape, and even Club Penguin, a themed virtual
where younger players interact through a variety of Penguin themed
environments and activities. It has been argued that these spaces,
outside traditional education, are able to offer pedagogical insights
(Twining 2009) i.e. that these global virtual communities have been
identified as being useful as creative educational environments (Delwiche
2006; Sheehy 2009). This chapter will explore how researchers might
use these spaces to investigative and create inclusive educational
experiences for learners. In order to do this the chapter considers
three interrelated issues: What is inclusive education?; How might
inclusive education influence virtual world research? And, what might
inclusive education look like in virtual worlds?
