Date of Award
5-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Learning Sciences
Committee Chair/Advisor
Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens, PhD
Committee Member
Danielle Herro, PhD
Committee Member
Luke Rapa, PhD
Committee Member
Emily Howell, PhD
Abstract
For foreign-born adults living in the U.S., learning, speaking, and understanding English is essential to be able to work, access needed resources, facilitate healthcare, communicate with teachers at a child’s school, and build relationships and communicate with others within their communities. Yet, many of these individuals have limited English proficiency and are unable to speak and understand the language well. There are some opportunities to learn English in the U.S. as a foreign-born adult, but these avenues of learning are limited in the type of personalized, contextualized, and real-world language learning opportunities that are provided. There is a need to find opportunities for these adults to learn and practice English within their real-life, everyday situations outside of the classroom. Research indicates that mobile augmented reality (MAR) can enhance adult language learning through personalized, self-directed, situated, and authentic learning experiences. Past research has explored the use of MAR for language learning, but there is limited research on how foreign-born adults in the U.S. appropriate MAR to learn and practice English outside of the classroom and to what extent does this affect their self-efficacy. Exploring how foreign-born adults appropriate MAR to learn and practice English in the U.S. will help develop a richer understanding of what these adults value, the capabilities and implications of MAR for language learning, and to what situations are MAR tools applied outside of the classroom. For this research, I used a multi-case study approach to explore how seven adults from five different countries, who had been in the U.S. 7 years or less, appropriated Google Lens MAR for language tasks outside of the classroom and how this experience influenced their self-efficacy. The adults used Google Lens in four planned activities within different contexts, to include a restaurant and a museum, to learn and practice English. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data resulting from each participant’s discourse during the activities, their journal writings, their drawings, and their post-interviews to identify and describe the patterns and themes that occurred. A pre-post self-efficacy survey was also used to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the data as it related to the study. Findings revealed that the adult learners who appropriated the Google Lens MAR in this study developed new approaches and ways of thinking about language learning outside of the classroom; engaged in active interaction with people and objects in their environment to meet personalized goals outside the classroom; connected their first language, interests, and culture with language meaning construction; and exhibited increased levels of English self-efficacy, MAR self-efficacy with intention to use in the future for language learning, and intrinsic motivation to learn English. Discussion of the findings include implications for teaching and learning for adults who are learning a new language in a new community in which they now live.
Recommended Citation
Bailey, Cinamon S., "The Effect of Mobile Augmented Reality on the Self-Efficacy of Adults Learning English in the U.S." (2025). All Dissertations. 3926.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/3926
Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0002-9507-3039
Included in
Adult and Continuing Education Commons, Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons