individual sections, or instances, where interesting contradictions occurred,
and related these to the other measures (scores on the tests and especially
recall of activity during interview discussions). The examples that were
presented here seem to suggest that the actions based on the implicit cues
(getting the shape of the area right, for instance) or on the feedback provided
by the virtual environment (taking into account the restrictions in placing the
blocks on certain tiles) helped most students complete the tasks successfully.
However, there was no evidence that successful problem solving in the
interactive VR condition resulted in their understanding of the underlying
concept, nor did it demonstrate proof of conceptual change on a deep level. If
anything, it was the passive VR condition that proved to be surprisingly
interesting in that it fostered a certain kind of reflective process on the part of
the student (e.g., as shown from Cherry’s interaction). All of the children who
participated in the passive VR condition enjoyed watching and verbally
directing the robot in performing the tasks. After completion of each task, the
student was prompted by the observer to explain what the robot had done and
why. For the children that had difficulties with the tasks, the robot seemed to
take on the role of a more able peer, essentially demonstrating the correct
answer. In this sense, the passive VR condition provided, implicitly, a guided
form of experience, where the learner embarked in a process of reflective
observation (watching others or developing observation about own experience
[]). The robot acted as an additional level of mediation which seemed to
support the children’s reflective thought, the ability to step back and consider
a situation critically and analytically, with growing awareness of their own
learning process. This finding agrees with the Vygotskian view that learning
environments should involve guided interaction, permitting children to reflect
on inconsistency and to change their conceptions []. It also suggests that
perhaps a learning environment that combines guided activity with an
enhanced prompting mechanism on behalf of the system may be more
effective in fostering a reflective process that can lead to conceptual change.
On the other hand, a fully interactive environment such as the one provided
for the IVR condition in this study, although beneficial in problem solving,
may be lacking the necessary support to scaffold conceptual learning.
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