Pierce XRLab: A Two-Year Spiral Curriculum for Extended Reality in Middle School

Extended Reality (XR) is increasingly discussed in educational research as a medium for experiential learning, multimodal meaning-making, and creative engagement. School-based applications, however, often remain focused on individual activities or technologies. This chapter presents Pierce XRLab, a two-year XR curriculum for Grades 8–9 developed as a standalone middle school course for implementation within short lesson periods and shared device conditions. Sixteen units, eight in each grade, are organized in a spiral sequence that revisits key concepts under progressively more demanding interpretive, critical, and design conditions. XR is understood as a learning environment and as a representational and cultural medium that can shape perception, credibility, identity, and participation. The model draws on constructivist and constructionist learning, embodied cognition, experiential and pragmatist traditions, and critical media literacy. Four recurring spiral axes, developed through iterative curriculum organization and revision, make the conceptual progression explicit and focus on embodied engagement, representation and illusion, culture and identity, and experience design, critique, and ethics. Assessment is organized around three recurring evidence types, Experience Logs, Critical Briefs, and Design Artifacts. Implementation emphasizes repeatable instructional routines, resource-conscious technology choices, flexible substitution of technologies, classroom rotation, and explicit safety practices. The chapter contributes a curriculum-level model connecting longitudinal conceptual progression, recurring evidence of learning, and classroom enactment within routine school time and resource constraints. Empirical findings from the ongoing design-based research study fall outside the scope of the present chapter.

Keywords: Extended reality, immersive learning, middle school curriculum, curriculum design.