Abstract
The overpopulation of our planet creates pressures, not only upon natural and human-created environments, but also upon human well-being. Responding to the Australian government’s focus upon education as a means for improved health, well-being and economic competitiveness, schools and universities strive to embed environmental sustainability and creativity in a crowded curriculum. The use of virtual worlds as restorative environments may help to realise this vision, which is shared by other nations with technologically rich, but time-poor and urbanised societies. This chapter draws upon the final stage of a three-stage study into pre-service teachers’ perceptions of personal well-being, sense of belonging, social connectedness and personal creativity and engagement. It considers how these senses were impacted by participants’ immersive experiences in a natural-seeming virtual world environment in Second Life and in their comparative experience in a formal garden setting. Findings suggest that Second Life may serve as a restorative environment if participants are sufficiently familiar with the user interface and virtual world environment.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the University of Southern Queensland for its support and funding of the study that informed this chapter and the peer reviewers whose anonymous feedback informed enhancements in the final work.
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Jones, J.K., Farley, H., Murphy, A. (2018). Virtual Worlds as Restorative Environments. In: Gregory, S., Wood, D. (eds) Authentic Virtual World Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6382-4_4
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