Metaverse in Education: Prospects and Its Impact on History Teaching - A Systematic Review

Abstract

Research on the metaverse has largely focused on general technological development and its application in education. However, systematic reviews specifically examining the use of the metaverse in history education remain limited. This study aims to examine the directions, strategies, and reported impacts of metaverse development in history education. A systematic literature review was conducted using the framework proposed by Petticrew and Roberts, consisting of seven stages: refining the research question, determining inclusion and exclusion criteria, conducting a literature search, assessing study quality, synthesizing evidence, exploring study heterogeneity and potential sources of bias, and disseminating the findings. The review followed PRISMA guidelines, with literature searches conducted in the Scopus and ScienceDirect databases for studies published between 2019 and 2024. From 119 identified articles, 10 studies met the inclusion, relevance, and quality assessment criteria and were selected for in-depth analysis. The findings indicate that research on the metaverse in history education has employed development, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches. The reviewed studies show that metaverse-based history education has the potential to enhance students’ engagement, motivation, historical understanding, and historical thinking skills through immersive, interactive, and contextual learning environments. The metaverse can support history learning by presenting historical spaces, events, and narratives in ways that encourage inquiry, interpretation, contextualization, and critical reflection. However, the reviewed studies varied in research design, learning context, platform, participants, and outcome variables, making a statistical meta-analysis unsuitable. Therefore, this review provides an exploratory thematic synthesis of current research trends and highlights future directions for the development of metaverse-based history education.