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Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Virtual Place-Based Learning pp 35–51Cite as

Virtual Reality as a Pedagogical Tool for Interdisciplinarity and Place-Based Education

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Abstract

Place-based education (PBE) has long been recognized as a high-impact educational practice. It embeds learning in a multi-sensory context that nurtures active, praxis-driven, interdisciplinary, and collaborative learning. More recently, educators have begun to utilize digital media and virtual reality technologies in ways that seem to parallel PBE. Using phenomenological concepts, especially following Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schütz, this chapter explores what the parallels and differences might be between physical and virtual places, ontologically as well as in its pedagogical role in PBE. It also attempts to interpret the other chapters of the book in light of the philosophical implications.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ossi Ollinaho, “Virtualization of the Lifeworld,” Human Studies 41 (2018):193–209. See the section “Province of Meaning” below.

  2. 2.

    There are critics of constructivism that are concerned for maintaining “objective” standards of disciplinary learning that these two metrics capture, such as Graham McPhail in “The Fault Lines of Recontextualisation: The Limits of Constructivism in Education,” British Educational Research Journal 42, no. 2 (April 2016): 294–313; PennyVan Bergen and Mitch Parsell, “Comparing Radical, Social and Psychological Constructivism in Australian Higher Education: A Psycho-philosophical Perspective,” The Australian Educational Researcher 46 (2019): 41–58.

  3. 3.

    Laureen Park, “Varieties of Place: A Phenomenological Analysis of Place-based Education,” in Interdisciplinary Place-Based Learning in Urban Education: Exploring Virtual Worlds, ed. Reneta Lansiquot and Sean MacDonald (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

  4. 4.

    Donald Hoffman, “Perception Deception,” Scientific American 313, no. 5 75 (November 2015). Additionally, he has a forthcoming book on the topic that expands the argument.

  5. 5.

    For example, Christine Constantinople at NYU, Beau Lotto at University of London and Anil Smith at University of Sussex.

  6. 6.

    Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 3rd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996).

  7. 7.

    See Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (Ideas II), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), 20.

  8. 8.

    Husserl writes that philosophy is a “rigorous science.” See Husserl, Edmund, Logical Investigations, trans. J.N. Findlay (NY: Humanities Press: 1970), 42. His is a science and not merely a “psychological” account.

  9. 9.

    Ollinaho, “Virtualization of the Lifeworld.”

  10. 10.

    Olga Gilyazova, “The Relationship Between Virtual and Actual Reality: Phenomenological/Ontological Approach.” Journal of History Culture and Art Research, 8, no. 1 (2019): 200.

  11. 11.

    Joohan Kim, “Phenomenology of Digital Being,” Human Studies 24, no.1/2 (2001): 87.

  12. 12.

    In characterizing VR here, I draw from Kim, “Phenomenology of Digital Being” and Gilyazova, “The Relationship Between Virtual and Actual Reality.”

  13. 13.

    Due to the lack of space, I will not be elaborating upon my own experiences with VR in the classroom, but I teach an interdisciplinary class with ten guest lecturers from different disciplines. The culminating project is a VR depiction of the future of humanity, including a virtual world which groups of students collaborate on, populated by avatars which each student designs individually. Students often create dystopias that serve as warnings against certain cultural trends. On occasion, students depict utopias that reflect a cleaner, more egalitarian future. Of course, none of these exist in the here and now, but reflecting on such possibilities helps students to clarify and crystallize their ideas what it means to be human.

  14. 14.

    Ollinaho, “Virtualization of the Lifeworld,” 199.

  15. 15.

    Ollinaho, “Virtualization of the Lifeworld,” 199.

  16. 16.

    I concur with Gilyazova when she writes, “Although the functional openness unlocks the ontological boundaries between the user and VR (to the extent of a deceptive feeling of absolute presence in the cyberspace), it is not able to eliminate the ontological nature of the boundaries” (Gilyazova, “Relationship Between Virtual and Actual Reality,” 200).

  17. 17.

    Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (New York: Penguin Books, 2014).

  18. 18.

    I have already referred to Giliazova’s and Olihano’s works, but I will also be referring to Shunyang Zhao’s “Consociated Contemporaries as an Emergent Realm of the Lifeworld: Extending Schütz’s Phenomenological Analysis to Cyberspace,” Human Studies 27 (2004): 91–105.

  19. 19.

    Laureen Park, “A Study of Integration: The Role of Sensus Communis in Integrating Disciplinary Knowledge,” in Interdisciplinary Pedagogy for STEM: A Collaborative Case Study, ed. Reneta Lansiquot (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

  20. 20.

    Ollinaho, “Virtualization of the Lifeworld.”

  21. 21.

    Ollinaho, “Virtualization of the Lifeworld,” 198.

  22. 22.

    McPhail, “The Fault Lines of Recontextualisation,” 304.

  23. 23.

    According to Stephen Moysey and Kelly Lazar, “[f]or example, the feeling of the sun on one’s skin while walking down a trail in the Grand Canyon (regardless of whether pleasant or blistering) contributes to affect in a way that would be impossible to achieve within current commercial VR technologies.” See Chap. 7, “Using Virtual Reality as a Tool for Field-Based Learning in the Earth Sciences.”

  24. 24.

    Moysey and Lazar, “Using Virtual Reality as a Tool for Field-Based Learning in the Earth Sciences,” 106.

  25. 25.

    Moysey and Lazar, “Using Virtual Reality as a Tool for Field-Based Learning in the Earth Sciences,” 106.

  26. 26.

    Tung Fung, Yee Ling, Hui Lin, “From Paper Maps to Virtual Reality; a View from Hong Kong,” The Cartographic Journal 41, no. 3 (December 2004): 263.

  27. 27.

    MacDonald, 71.

  28. 28.

    Husserl, Ideas II, 205.

  29. 29.

    Lev Vygotsky, a Russian Psychologist, put the idea of “social” constructivism on the map, but this idea is probably a part of all constructivist theories of knowledge to some extent.

  30. 30.

    Schunk, Learning Theories, 238.

  31. 31.

    Schunk, Learning Theories, 261–282.

  32. 32.

    Lansiquot, Cunningham, and Cabo, “Computational Thinking and the Role-Playing Classroom,” 153.

  33. 33.

    Ollinaho, “Virtualization of the Lifeworld,” 200.

  34. 34.

    John Dewey, The School and Society (Mineola: Dover Books, 2001), 22.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Salem Art Works in Salem, NY, for their writing residency in summer 2018 during which I reflected, researched, and planned this chapter. Being surrounded by craft and maker artists was a good reminder of what VR was not, which was a much-needed counter perspective. I would also like to thank Louis J. Colombo and Róbert Jack, both of whom have helped me think through problems and improve my writing in this particular piece as well as in others over the years. This is a long overdue thanks.

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  1. New York City College of Technology, The City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Laureen Park

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  1. New York City College of Technology, The City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Reneta D. Lansiquot

  2. New York City College of Technology, The City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Sean P. MacDonald

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Park, L. (2019). Virtual Reality as a Pedagogical Tool for Interdisciplinarity and Place-Based Education. In: Lansiquot, R., MacDonald, S. (eds) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Virtual Place-Based Learning. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32471-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32471-1_3

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