Augmented reality and teaching strategies in the study of volcanism in elementary and secondary schools

Abstract This study investigated the impact of two teaching strategies, conventional and drawing principle, associated with the use of Augmented Reality (AR), on the school performance of pupils in the 7th-year of primary school and the 10th-year of secondary school on volcanism learning. Compared to previous research, the novelty of this study lies in the comparative analysis of these two teaching strategies and their association with AR applications. Four classes from the 7th-year and two from the 10th-year were studied, following a quasi-experimental design, with two control classes and two experimental classes in the 7th-year, and one control class and one experimental class in the 10th-year. The Classical Theory of Tests was applied to analyse the evidence of knowledge evaluation on volcanism, used in all groups in post-test and follow-up. Descriptive and inferential statistics, including Student’s t -test, were conducted for paired and unpaired groups after determining the normality and homogeneity of variance of the samples. In the 7th-year, students who used the drawing principle as a learning strategy performed better compared to those who used conventional teaching. When the drawing principle was associated with the use of AR, students achieved better results in the follow-up test. In 10th-year students, the results consistently showed better performance when the conventional teaching strategy was associated with the use of AR.