Prospective Teachers' Acceptance of virtual reality technology: a mixed study in Rural China

Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly being viewed as one of the most effective and efficient instructional tools in educational settings. The successful implementation of this innovative instructional technology presupposes teachers' acceptance and diffusion. And prospective teachers, as the teacher talent pool, their beliefs and acceptance of VR determine if and how they use it in the future classroom. However, little is known about their attitudes and adoptions. As such, the main goal of the present study is to investigate the behaviour and intentions of prospective teachers to use VR in class. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) was used as an evaluative framework for the study. A pre-post design was used to collect perspectives before and after using VR through questionnaires (N = 58) and semi-structured interviews (N = 44). The findings indicated that following intervention, preservice teachers' behavioural intention, effort expectancy, hedonic motivation, and price value were improved significantly; and that price value had a significant effect on behavioural intention. Meanwhile, barriers to implementing VR into future educational practises, such as the digital divide and culture reasons, were observed. Limitations and implications are also discussed.