An Empirical Study of VR Microteaching Training to Enhance Pre-Service Teachers’ Teaching Skills: Teaching Behaviors Analysis Based on Two-phase Training

Virtual reality-based teaching training helps to overcome the limitations of traditional microteaching, especially in terms of the authenticity and complexity of simulated teaching scenarios. However, most of the existing related studies focus on the enhancement of trainees’ teaching skills and relatively neglect the characteristics of teaching behaviors during the training process. In addition, the lack of effective training on classroom management skills is also an important challenge of traditional microteaching. Therefore, in this study, the microteaching training was divided into two phases: basic teaching skills training and classroom management skills training. Fifty-eight pre-service teachers were randomly divided into two groups to receive two phases of training in the traditional microteaching classroom and the virtual classroom respectively. The results showed that the VR teaching training not only helped to improve the basic teaching skills of the pre-service teachers, but also significantly improved their classroom management skills and the overall level of teaching skills. In addition, in both phases of the experiment, the teaching behavior patterns of the two groups showed significant differences, with the experimental group displaying more diverse and complex behavior patterns.