The Metaverse in Mathematics Education: The Opinions of Secondary School Mathematics Teachers

Abstract

The concept of the metaverse, which has recently attracted attention, consists of a combination of the words "meta" and "universe" and is defined as the other universe. The Metaverse also refers to an immersive virtual environment in which a person can interact with avatars. To overcome the boundaries of 2-dimensional platforms, Metaverse-supported distance education models and the concept of meta-education have emerged. This situation provides an opportunity for both students and teachers to have rich, hybrid, active learning experiences. With the Covid 19 pandemic process, technology-supported applications have been quickly integrated into education. At this point, Metaverse will inevitably be involved in the education sector. The need to determine the knowledge, attitudes, and awareness of our teachers, the practitioners of education, about the concept of metaverse has arisen. The convergent parallel mixed method, which allows simultaneous collection of quantitative and qualitative data, was used. 70 mathematics teachers who teach in different regions of Turkey and secondary schools, selected by the easily accessible case sampling method, participated in the study. An interview form prepared by the researchers was used to collect the data. The first part of the interview form is the "Metaverse Scale" prepared by Suleymanogulları, Ozdemir, Bayraktar, and Vural (2022), and the second part is one closed-ended and three open-ended questions. Quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics included in the SPSS 24.0 program and t-test for independent samples, while qualitative data were analyzed by content analysis. The results of the research also shed light on the future of students studying in different conditions in different regions of the country following the opinions of mathematics teachers who perform their duties in different regions of Turkey.