Augmented reality for ESL/EFL and bilingual education: an international comparison

In recent decades, educational technologies have enabled new opportunitiesfor teaching and learning on a recurrent basis. In contemporary educationalcontexts, which are mainly oriented towards active methodologies and studentcentered approaches, educational technologies have led to a significantbreakthrough in education. Among emergent educational technologies, it isinteresting to specifically highlight the current importance of Augmented Reality(AR), which allows overlaying of virtual objects (that is, ‘augmented’ elements)into the real world. This paper, after exploring the potential of AR in education, isaimed at comparing pre-service English as a Second Language (ESL), English asa Foreign Language (EFL) and Bilingual Education (BE) teachers’ perceptions,uses and preferences (n = 53) from two universities (Texas Woman’s University,USA, and University of Córdoba, Spain) regarding the use of AR, and analyzewhether there are similarities and/or differences based on sociocultural context,approaches to education or teacher practices. The findings reveal the positiveattitudes towards integrating AR in ESL/EFL and bilingual contexts of theparticipants of the two institutions. The most noted advantages of AR are thatit enhances classroom engagement and its focus is different from traditionalteaching methods, increasing student motivation and facilitating their learningprocesses. Some reported challenges imposed by AR are that access to mobiledevices is limiting, the cost of technology, technical issues and the necessityfor specialized teacher training. We also found other challenges and numerousadvantages of AR usage in ESL/EFL and bilingual contexts, which are discussedthoroughly. Finally, current needs in the field are identified and suggestions areoffered for further research in AR for ESL/EFL and BE.