Exploring the potential of adopting an interactive mixed-reality tool in teacher professional development: Impact on teachers’ self-efficacy and practical competencies of dialogic pedagogy

This study examines how adopting an interactive mixed-reality tool (IMRT) in teacher professional development affects teachers' self-efficacy and practical competencies of dialogic pedagogy. As a widely used method for teaching, dialogic pedagogy is important for orchestrating productive educational achievement. However, it is challenging to manipulate such pedagogy and thus there is the need for scalable professional development. This study initially incorporated a customised IMRT, which supports teachers to communicate with a virtual administrator, to generate comments and refinements for classroom dialogue in an immersive and tangible way. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 60 primary school teachers to test its effectiveness. This study discovered that teachers participating in the IMRT-based training tended to exhibit greater self-efficacy in enhancing dialogic pedagogy compared to those who engaged in traditional training methods. Furthermore, these teachers' practical competencies concerning dialogic pedagogy increased dramatically. Specifically, they gained greater proficiency in managing elaborated, coordinated, and speculative talk. Under their skilful initiation of dialogue, students were more inclined to justify ideas, seek connections, explore possibilities, and engage in constructive conversations. Moreover, findings indicated that more positive correlations between teachers’ self-efficacy and their actual practice in the IMRT-based training group, especially with regard to dialogues involving complex ways of thinking. This study offers valuable insights for technological integration and pedagogical improvement. It contributes to the viability of scalable teacher training and to helping in-service teachers with their professional growth.