Teachers' professional vision in action

Abstract

Abstract. In need of simultaneously tackling various tasks at a fast pace, teaching is a job that requires skillful attention allocation. Selective visual attention forms the basis of teacher's professional vision – the expertise of attending to and interpreting classroom features, but it is also a process mostly hidden from direct observation. Eye tracking can capture this otherwise invisible attentional process and has long been used in demonstrating the visual expertise in various skill domains. Yet, the relationship between expertise and teachers' eye movements during real-life teaching remains a seldom explored area. The current study investigated the distinctive features of teachers' gaze in relation to their expertise levels. Specifically, eye movements were collected from 25 pairs of expert and novice teachers, with each pair teaching in the same classroom and with the same content. The eye movements were analyzed using scanpath comparison and point pattern analysis method. Results revealed that compared with novices, expert teachers had overall shorter fixation durations and larger quantity of fixations. They also had smaller proportion of fixations directed to objects irrelevant to teaching and the distribution of their fixations were wider. These results demonstrated that teachers had distinctive eye movement features in relation to their expertise levels. Most importantly, expert teachers exhibited better selective attention – a key component of professional vision. The implications regarding teacher education and instruction were also discussed.