Enactive experiences in technology-enabled immersive settings: educational purposes and pragmatic effects. Insights from a literature review

In the contemporary postdigital context, enactive approaches identify immersive educational technologies as one of their main fields of application. Several authors (cf. Gonçalves et al., 2024) have taken up and further developed Francisco Varela’s insights (1999), identifying immersive settings as spaces for designing and observing educational experiences grounded in enactive principles. A specific literature review is being constructed to explore and critically examine studies that, drawing on enactive principles, design, observe, and assess educational and learning experiences within technology-enabled immersive settings. The review is carried out using the main education databases (ERIC, Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, PsycINFO, Education Research Complete, Education Database, and SciELO), as well as search engines providing access to grey literature, such as Google Scholar. This review aims to critically examine the educational purposes and objectives underlying the design and analysis of such educational experiences across different educational areas (e.g., outdoor education, biodiversity education, special education, STEM education), as well as the pragmatic effects reported in the literature.