Student Teachers’ and Experienced Teachers’ Professional Vision of Students’ Understanding of the Rational Number Concept

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate differences in student teachers’ and experienced teachers’ professional vision in natural settings and to elicit clues of the relation of in-the-moment noticing and instruction quality of students’ understanding of rational number concept. Rational number concept challenges both students and teachers because of natural number bias that learning of rational numbers is vulnerable to. Accurate professional vision and adequate instructions are needed to enhance students’ understanding of rational number concept. Mobile eye-tracking technique enables video recording of natural teaching situations from a teacher’s perspective with more specific information of teacher’s in-the-moment noticing. Combined with cued retrospective reporting, this approach can gather more explicit evidence of teachers’ professional vision and instructions. Results indicated that both student teachers and experienced teachers attended to mathematical and fraction-related aspect similarly but differed in interpreting and instructing students’ fraction understanding. Student teachers made more advanced interpretations but their instructions were less adequate, whereas among experienced teachers, it was just the opposite. Furthermore, student teachers made more attempts to shared attention when using fraction understanding non-supporting instructions, whereas experienced teachers’ attempts to shared attention were related to fraction understanding supporting instructions. Results indicate student teachers’ difficulty to transfer pedagogical content knowledge from noticing to actions and experienced teachers to have more enhanced in-the-moment professional vision and its application to teaching. Practical implications for teacher training as well as methodological decisions of in-the-moment professional vision studies in natural settings are discussed.

Investigating Visual Perception in Teaching and Learning with Advanced Eye-Tracking Methodologies: Rewards and Challenges of an Innovative Research Paradigm

“…Indeed, there are correlational data supporting this contention (see Weber et al 2018, Kersting et al 2012). On the other hand, especially the study by Pouta et al (2020) showed that the experienced teachers in their study reflected about the videos of their teaching in a less sophisticated manner than the student teachers did. But nevertheless, the experienced teachers were far more successful in scaffolding students' mathematical thinking than the student teachers.…”

“…Thus, successful implementation of withitness implies that a teacher has successfully established the mutual belief (see Clark 1996) that s/he is willing and able to detect and to prohibit every single disruptive behavior that occurs in the classroom. Such a transactional or communicational perspective on teaching is indeed adopted by several papers in this special issue (see Haataja et al 2020;Pouta et al 2020;Wyss et al, 2020). Hence, in learning to implement withitness effectively in the classroom, the demand on teacher students is mainly communicational rather than observational.…”

“…This paradoxical finding sheds some doubt on a fundamental theoretical assumption underlying the notion of professional vision as currently favored in teacher education research (see Blömeke et al 2015). Accordingly, "accurate noticing and knowledge-based reasoning […] are needed in order to transfer a teacher's pedagogical content knowledge into accurate instructions" (see Pouta et al 2020). In fact, Pouta et al's results call this mediator role of professional vision as "a system bridging knowledge and practice" into question.…”

Teachers’ Professional Vision: Teachers’ Gaze During the Act of Teaching and After the Event

“…Most studies that we analyzed used either a questionnaire (e.g., Observer; Blomberg et al, 2013), an interview (Es and Sherin, 2006), or a written commentary (Vondrova and Zalska, 2012). Only four of the studies used eye-tracking, and only two of those in the act of teaching (Pouta et al, 2020;Seidel et al, 2020).…”

“…Observation studies (direct observation, video studies) offer an outsiders' perspective, stimulated recalls provide insights removed from the immediacy of the classroom. Recently, eye-tracking has been introduced as a method to study teacher's perspective in the moment of teaching (Cortina et al, 2015;Dessus et al, 2016;McIntyre et al, 2017;Stürmer et al, 2017;Pouta et al, 2020;Smidekova et al, 2020). The rationale behind using eye-tracking studies is the eye-mind hypothesis, or what is attended to by the eye is processed by the mind (Duchowski, 2007, s. 3).…”