In recent years, educators, teacher educators, policymakers, parents, and society as a whole have become increasingly cognisant of the importance of creating inclusive learning environments within schools in order to cater to the diverse needs of students, and to diversity among students. Guðjónsdóttir and Óskarsdóttir (2020) outline that the term inclusion, which was once focused predominantly on meeting the needs of pupils with disability in mainstream schools, has now shifted so that “the emphasis in education is now on meeting the needs of all learners, with all their diversity and differences” (2020, p. 96). For teachers, work on an awareness of the importance of and approaches to developing inclusive practice begins at the level of ITE; in the words of Rowan et al. , “teacher educators have a clear leadership role to play in helping future teachers conceptualize and implement the kinds of educational interventions that have the greatest possible chance of creating new educational futures within which all learners have an opportunity to succeed” (2021, pp. 149–150). Within ITE, practicum experiences are widely recognised as being the nexus between theory and practice where the Pre-Service Teacher (PST) undergoes professional growth and development, but are also acknowledged to be a demanding experience for them, and indeed issues relating to inclusive practice are often specifically identified as challenging by PSTs (Forlin & Chambers, 2011). As a result of these intersecting factors, ITE programs often face difficulties in creating applied teaching experiences for PSTs whereby they may develop their knowledge, skills, and dispositions with regard to inclusive practice as a core facet of their teaching.

One possible means to help address this is through the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. Villena-Taranilla et al. (2022, p. 2) define Virtual Reality as “technology that generates virtual immersion in a digital environment, thanks to a computer graphic simulation which allows users to immerse themselves in an interactive three-dimensional world in which different types of sensory and emotional experiences are encountered”. Consideration of the use of VR with regard to the pre-service development of teachers is well established on an international level; see for instance the recent systematic review by Huang et al. (2023) and the scoping review by Hillyar et al. (2024) on simulation technologies and their application to Initial Teacher Education. While VR has therefore found application in programmes of ITE for a range of purposes, the development and promotion of inclusive practice by PSTs is emerging as one focus of attention. For instance, Perinpasingam et al.’s (2023) exploration of PSTs’ experience with VR roleplaying micro-teaching activities in Malaysia found that the use of VR offered a creative and engaging method for PSTs to refine their teaching abilities with regard to engaging with diverse learners in a virtual classroom environment, while Karadayı and Evin-Gencel (2024) highlight how VR could prove effective in helping PSTs adapt instruction to individual differences and foster more inclusive education. VR simulations offer a number of affordances for the development of inclusive educational practices by novice teachers; for instance, Judge et al. further highlight how the “protected” nature of such visual-based simulation environments “allows pre-service teachers to utilize their emergent knowledge of behavior, diversity, and effective instruction in a flexible and safe practice environment” (2013, p. 88).

Situated within a wider project context regarding the development of an immersive Virtual Reality classroom to help facilitate the development of inclusive teaching practices by pre-service teachers, this paper undertakes a preliminary scoping review of peer-reviewed academic literature on the use of virtual simulations for this purpose.

A scoping review is one of a family of literature reviews which adopt a systematic approach to finding, analysing, interpreting, and reporting on key literature with regard to a particular topic (Sutton et al., 2019). Scoping reviews are particularly relevant when the purpose of the review is to provide evidence to inform practice (Munn et al., 2018), as is the case with regard to the current review. Thus, this paper utilises the widely recognised five-step framework for the undertaking of scoping reviews as proposed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005): (1) identifying the research question(s), (2) identifying relevant studies, (3) study selection, (4) charting the data, and (5) summarising and reporting findings. Papers were sourced from a search of the academic databases Academic Search Complete, Education Source, Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC), Web of Science (WoS), and Scopus. Inclusion/exclusion criteria included a date range of 15 years (2010-2024), and papers sourced from peer-reviewed academic literature. The search string used boolean operators and utilised a range of key search terms from the core elements of the study, which can be expressed simply as (“Initial Teacher Education” AND “Virtual Reality” AND “Inclusive Practice”); these terms were compiled through the authors’ own knowledge of these topics, as well as consultation of other systematic reviews which had explored such issues, and were verified by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from each field. Results were exported from the various databases and imported into the Rayyan software package for screening purposes; this facilitated both the management of the screening process and also inter-rater checks on the part of the authors. Papers were first reviewed on the basis of title, abstract, and keywords, before progressing to a full-text review of remaining papers and removing any further papers that did not meet the threshold for inclusion at that time. A Data Extraction Template (DET) was created using Google Forms and used to extract key details on each of the remaining studies during the full-text review as this allowed easy export of the captured data to spreadsheet format for analysis (filtering, querying, etc.) and compilation of the report.

This paper first considers the use of Virtual Reality simulations in Initial Teacher Education more broadly, before turning its attention to the findings from our 15-year scoping review of academic literature pertaining to the use of these technologies for development and promotion of inclusive teaching practices by pre-service teachers as part of their ITE programme. The search process and results are illustrated using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. The review finds that uses of these approaches is situated along a continuum of virtual immersion in terms of simulation experience, and use both human-controlled student avatars and automated student avatars which PSTs engage with. Issues of inclusive teaching practice include the use of virtual simulation experiences to enable pre-service teachers to practice implementing culturally responsive teaching with diverse learners, facilitating reflection by PSTs on their teaching within a virtual reality platform in terms of how their lesson supported diversity of needs, and the use of virtual simulations to develop PSTs’ classroom management and interpersonal skills. Several advantages to the use of VR environments are also reported, such as that VR allows practice and rehearse their teaching in safe, controlled environments without real-world consequences, and that engaging in these virtual simulations can lead to increased confidence and and self-awareness on the part of PSTs with regard to inclusive teaching practices. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these findings for the ongoing development and usage of a VR classroom environment for fostering and promoting inclusive teaching practices by PSTs, as well as reflecting upon some challenges for a literature review such as this, which include ambiguous use and understanding of key search terms.

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