An international research project investigating how Virtual Reality (VR) can be used to raise student awareness of climate change, its consequences and possible responses.
Through the design, implementation, and evaluation of web-based VR interventions, the project explores how immersive experiences shape students’ understanding, awareness, and intentions to act on climate issues.
VISTA combines educational technology, climate change education, and teacher training within a design-based, mixed-methods approach that includes quasi-experimental studies and qualitative inquiry.
The project is hosted at the Centre for the Study of Professions (SPS), OsloMet, in collaboration with CICERO – Center for International Climate Research (cicero.oslo.no) and involves teachers, students, and experts to ensure both scientific impact and practical relevance.
Project summary
VISTA is an important project as it addresses one of the most urgent and contested challenges of our time: how to foster climate change awareness in schools in ways that are both meaningful and pedagogically sound.
Climate change education is often shaped by tensions between scientific knowledge, emotional engagement, and pedagogical feasibility, raising questions about how environmental literacy can be effectively embedded in curricula and classroom practices.
The integration of immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) into climate education holds considerable promise, yet remains contested, as it touches upon fundamental issues of how children experience, understand, and act upon global challenges.
Current research has tended to emphasize students’ cognitive understanding of climate change, while the affective and experiential dimensions that are essential for long-term awareness and behavioral change have received less attention. Similarly, although VR has increasingly been introduced into educational contexts, many studies focus primarily on its technological novelty rather than systematically evaluating its pedagogical impact. As a result, the potential of VR to be meaningfully integrated into classroom practices and curriculum goals is still underexplored.
VISTA directly responds to these gaps by explicitly addressing both the cognitive and affective dimensions of climate change awareness and by embedding VR interventions within authentic school contexts. The project aims to generate insights into how immersive technologies can be designed and implemented in ways that are both effective for learning and feasible for teachers to apply in practice.
Research questions
- What is the current level of awareness among lower-secondary students about climate change, its global consequences, and possible responses?
- What are the practices, benefits, and challenges of current climate change education in schools, and how can they be enhanced?
- How can VR-based interventions be designed to effectively foster students’ awareness of climate change while remaining pedagogically feasible?
- What is the effect of VR-based interventions on students’ awareness, engagement, and intentions to take action compared to traditional teaching methods?
- What principles can be derived from this research to guide future designs and practices of VR in climate change education?
