Eye-Tracking in Educational Practice: Investigating Visual Perception Underlying Teaching and Learning in the Classroom

Abstract

Classrooms full of pupils can be very overwhelming, both for teachers and students, as well as for their joint interactions. It is thus crucial that both can distil the relevant information in this complex scenario and interpret it appropriately. This distilling and interpreting happen to a large extent via visual perception, which is the core focus of the current Special Issue. Six empirical studies present examples of how to capture visual perception in the complexity of a classroom lesson. These examples open up new avenues that go beyond studying perception in restricted and artificial laboratory scenarios: some using video recordings from authentic lessons to others studying actual classrooms. This movement towards more realistic scenarios allows to study the visual perception in classrooms from new perspectives, namely that of the teachers, the learners, and their interactions. This in turn enables to shed novel light onto well-established theoretical concepts, namely students' engagement during actual lessons, teachers' professional vision while teaching, and establishment of joint attention between teachers and students in a lesson. Additionally, one theoretical contribution provides the very first model of teachers' cognitions during teaching in relation to their visual perception, which in turn will allow future research to move beyond explorations towards hypothesis testing. However, to fully thrive, this field of research has to address two crucial challenges: (i) the heterogeneity of its methodological approaches (e.g., varying age groups, subjects taught, lesson formats) and (ii) the recording and processing of personal data of many people (often minors). Hence, these new approaches bear not only new chances for insights but also new responsibilities for the researchers.

Novice and expert teachers’ situation-specific skills regarding classroom management: What do they perceive, interpret and suggest?

“…Furthermore, they were also used in rather qualitative studies that, for instance, compare novice and expert teachers' verbal analyses of video clips, thus taking a more situated perspective (Copeland et al, 1994;Wolff et al, 2015). A substantial disadvantage of using video clips is closely related to its major advantage of authenticity: Strictly speaking, the generalizability of research results is limited to those complex scenes that teachers have seen (Jarodzka et al, 2020;Seidel et al, 2010).…”

“…While mobile eye tracking has a higher ecological validity than video-based eye tracking, it also brings more difficulties regarding the generalization of results as every lesson is unique and many factors can influence perception (e.g. gender, subjects, age, teaching format) (Jarodzka et al, 2020). Using video clips can help to control some of these factors by ensuring that all participants at least see the same classroom scenes or events.…”

“…Video clips used might differ considerably in complexity or other aspects that could impact the results of research (Jarodzka et al, 2020 This dissertation has shown that with respect to the how of teachers' skills across different contents and contexts, it is especially decision-making that challenges novice teachers and should be supported (Stahnke et al, 2016;Stahnke & Blömeke, 2021b).…”

Using, Analyzing and Evaluating Eye-tracking at Different Educational Levels: Towards an Evaluation Framework for Impact Assessment

“…Teaching scenarios are complex due their simultaneity. Thanks to new and non-invasive eye-tracking glasses, the recording of teachers' gaze during teaching became feasible [16]. Such recordings allow us to see the classroom through teachers' eyes, in the field where actual teaching is happening, namely in the classroom, i.e., where teachers are guided by their pedagogical abilities when interacting with students.…”

Automatic Detection of Gaze and Body Orientation in Elementary School Classrooms

“…While gazes can be recorded with great precision using eye-trackers ( Jarodzka et al, 2021 ), these devices are large, expensive, and not suitable for sustained use in classrooms. However, there is a new technology involving mobile eye-trackers that makes it possible to investigate teacher gaze in the classroom ( McIntyre et al, 2019 ).…”