Influence of practical training based on virtual reality on functional scientific literacy of secondary schoolchildren (in biology)

The educational environment frequently encounters the issue of the inadequacy of traditional teaching approaches, which limits students’ ability not only to reproduce acquired knowledge but also to apply it in practice. The aim of our research is to investigate the impact of a virtual reality (VR) based educational program in biology on students’ functional literacy in the subject. A sample was taken from School No. 53 in Astana, Kazakhstan. Ninth-grade respondents were divided into two groups (experimental and control). Testing for functional scientific literacy of biology was conducted before and after the experiment using the Uno and Bybee model. The experimental group was introduced to a virtual reality program integrated into their biology lessons. Students in the experimental group engaged in virtual environments over the course of 15 lessons, exploring cells, reproductive processes, genetics, and ecology. The intervention took place from September to December 2023. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 2017, employing Student’s t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, and Cohen’s d. As a result, the experimental group enhanced their functional scientific literacy of biology after the program. There was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups after the experiment (p ≤ 0.05, d = 0.945). Participants in the experimental group, when answering the most difficult questions (BU), increased their average score to 10.76 compared to 6.12 before the program (p ≤ 0.05, d = 0.639). Thus, it can be confidently stated that practical training involving virtual reality positively influences the biological literacy of students. Practically, the article will be beneficial to biology teachers, scientists, and authors in the field under investigation.