Classroom disruptions: Impact on teachers' gaze patterns

Background

Teachers are expected to create an effective learning environment in their classroom while keeping an eye on classroom disruptions. This requires high monitoring competences as part of their noticing and professional vision. However, novice teachers often struggle dealing with critical situations and show ineffective monitoring behavior.

Aims

Using dynamic scanpath analyses, this eye-tracking study examined monitoring strategies of novice and expert teachers to understand how classroom disruptions affect teachers’ gaze behavior and what constitutes effective monitoring.

Sample

The sample consisted of 15 expert and 18 novice teachers.

Methods

Participants watched a short classroom video in which several minor and one major disruption occurred while their eye movements were recorded with an eye tracker. We analyzed their scanpaths by comparing Shannon entropy values to investigate the predictability of gaze transitions and the stability of their gaze patterns.

Results

Compared to novices, experts showed higher transition probabilities in their gaze behavior, both before and after the major disruption. Similarly, experts showed lower entropy scores, indicating more stable gaze behavior, whereas novices with higher entropy scores showed exploratory gaze behavior. In general, experts showed more adaptive monitoring strategies, returning to their routine gaze behavior more quickly than novices after an unexpected disruption.

Conclusions

This study enriches the cognitive theory of visual expertise by adding new expertise characteristics of teachers’ dynamic gaze behavior and situation-specific skills in disruptive classroom events. At the same time, the results reveal monitoring strategies that can be addressed in teacher education to enhance professional vision and classroom management.