Immersive Equity: Virtual Reality and Agentic Artificial Intelligence as Catalysts for Equity in Education

Bester ChimboKudakwashe Maguraushe^*Belinda Mutunhu Ndlovu

• University of South Africa - Unisa Science Campus, Johannesburg, South Africa

Introduction: Inclusive education advocates for removing structural barriers that may hinder learners with varying abilities from achieving equity in formal learning environments. Nevertheless, many students with special educational needs (SEN) face outright rejection due to rigid pedagogies, inaccessible content, and limited support, despite international commitments, such as Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). New immersive technologies, especially Virtual Reality (VR) and AI, can really alter education from episodic accommodation toward empowerment with equal opportunity. Notwithstanding the improvements, the technologies are still often considered as separate domains, resulting in a lack of understanding of the integrated, agentic use of technologies that can promote educational equity for learners with special needs. Methods: Using the PRISMA 2020 framework, searches were conducted across Scopus, Web of Science, and ERIC between 2020 and 2025. Sixteen empirical studies meeting the final inclusion criteria were analyzed to identify the pedagogical applications, learning outcomes, ethical challenges, and guiding frameworks. The SPIDER framework guided eligibility decisions, while methodological quality was assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). Results: The findings revealed that integrating a VR-AI environment increases engagement, cognitive accuracy, affective safety, and socio-emotional development by fostering co-agency, where the intelligent system acts with its own agency alongside the learner, enabling adaptive difficulty, emotional regulation, and personalized pacing. Interventions generally yielded greater gains in learner motivation, confidence, and communication skills compared to conventional methods. On the other hand, the scale-up of these innovations continues to be hindered by infrastructural inequities, limited teacher readiness, and thorny ethical issues related to data privacy and algorithmic bias. However, cross-study comparisons reveal some important limitations: limited diversity, a lack of rigorous accessibility testing and data governance safeguards, no longitudinal validation, and inadequate evaluation frameworks for algorithmic bias and biometric data ethics. Discussion: The study, drawing on insights, suggests the Integrated VR-AI Equity Framework, which consolidates pedagogical, affective, accessibility, and ethical angles into a single model for equitable immersive inclusion in learning. Resultantly, educational equity must be an endeavor towards compassionate design, ethical governance, and systemic support so that every learner can authentically feel a sense of belonging and dignity in intelligent learning environments.