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Professional experiences are vital in teacher education programmes, especially in early childhood teacher education programmes, as this allows pre-service teachers (PSTs) to apply their theoretical knowledge in real-world settings. Hence, PSTs’ preparation for their placement experience is crucial. Recently, the innovative use of virtual reality (VR) in teacher training has begun to support the professional development of PSTs, although this approach is studied less extensively compared to fields like medicine and aviation. This paper draws upon the cultural–historical concept of social situation of development (SSD) to explore how VR experiences enhance PSTs’ preparation before they enter their first professional experiences. This study involved 66 diverse post-graduate PSTs within an Australian post-graduate Initial Teacher Education programme in early childhood (EC) education. The VR experiences allowed them to engage with avatar children aged 3–5 within a realistic environment, fostering valuable insights regarding their practice in future professional experiences. By studying the PSTs’ reflections, this study identified the dramatic events that arose from PSTs’ interactions in VR. These moments highlighted instances of SSD, where PSTs advanced both mentally and practically in their placement preparation. Within SSD, PSTs developed a deeper understanding of child development, classroom dynamics, and the effectiveness of various teaching strategies. They also practised strategies, including teaching techniques, classroom management, behavioural guidance, and adapting to the diverse needs of avatar children. The mental and practical development significantly contributed to PSTs’ preparation for professional experiences. The subjective nature of their reflections provided valuable insights into their development from their own perspectives. However, it is important to note that this paper is based on data collected from a single post-graduate course. Future research will aim to gather perspectives from PSTs at multiple institutions, as well as from placement mentors, regarding PSTs’ understanding of working in early childhood contexts in Australia. Full article

When responding to allegations of child sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, Child Protection Service (CPS) workers and police personnel need to elicit detailed and accurate accounts of the abuse to assist in decision-making and prosecution. Current research emphasizes the importance of the interviewer’s ability to follow empirically based guidelines. In doing so, it is essential to implement economical and scientific training courses for interviewers. Due to recent advances in artificial intelligence, we propose to generate a realistic and interactive child avatar, aiming to mimic a child. Our ongoing research involves the integration and interaction of different components with each other, including how to handle the language, auditory, emotional, and visual components of the avatar. This paper presents three subjective studies that investigate and compare various state-of-the-art methods for implementing multiple aspects of the child avatar. The first user study evaluates the whole system and shows that the system is well received by the expert and highlights the importance of its realism. The second user study investigates the emotional component and how it can be integrated with video and audio, and the third user study investigates realism in the auditory and visual components of the avatar created by different methods. The insights and feedback from these studies have contributed to the refined and improved architecture of the child avatar system which we present here. Full article