Keeping the Overview in Class Discussions: How Hand-Raising Affects Visual Attention of Novice and Experienced Teachers

• In Event: Eye-Tracking Research on Teacher Noticing: Theoretical and Empirical Advances

Abstract

Theory
In order to situationally manage classroom events to create effective learning opportunities, it is necessary to adapt classroom actions to students’ internal learning processes (Wolff et al., 2020). Insights into these internal processes are commonly inferred from observable student behaviors, such as student hand- raising (Böheim et al., 2020). Selectively directing visual attention to such relevant observable characteristics and interpreting them is therefore considered a crucial situational skill (Seidel & Stürmer, 2014) and is referred to as teacher noticing in research on professional vision (Gegenfurtner et al., 2020). Previous studies have used eye tracking to gain knowledge about teacher noticing and demonstrated that experienced teachers’ attention is more knowledge-driven and student-centered, whereas novices teachers’ attention is more image- driven and often on non-relevant classroom events (Kosel et al., 2021; van den Bogert et al., 2014; Wolff et al., 2016).
However, the distribution of teachers’ attention during class discussions and interactions has not yet been sufficiently investigated. Managing classroom discourse is a complex task because teachers need to distribute their attention across all (non)-participating students. Observable behaviors such as hand-raising provide relevant diagnostic information on students’ current level of engagement and help teachers orchestrate class discussions.

Research Aims
First, this study explores the relationship between hand- raisings as an active and salient student behavior and the professional skill of teacher noticing using a global eye-tracking metric.

1. Is there a positive overall correlation between the number of fixations and student hand-raisings?

Second, the aim was to follow a temporal-procedural perspective and investigate whether novice and experienced teachers differ in their skill to distribute their attention among students who (do not) raise their hands during class discussions.

2. How do novice and experienced teachers differ in how they allocate their attention to students who (do not) raise their hands?

Methods
Eight STEM student teachers (MAge = 22.15) from the fourth semester and 11 experienced mathematics teachers (Mwork experience = 12 years; MAge = 37) participated in the study. The participants observed an authentic class video (11 min. 8th-grade high school mathematics). During this time, eye movements were recorded with a stationary SMI Red 500 eye tracker. Eye movements were then exported as a video file and manually coded. The coding scheme included how often individual students raised their hands, how often the participants looked at them, and whether they raised their hands or not during the fixation events.

Results
The results show a significant positive relationship between the number of hand-raisings and the distribution of attention, (F(1, 18) =. 5.632, p < .001). Furthermore, the results indicate that experienced teachers have both significantly more students in view who raise their hands (Mexperienced = 5.13, Mnovice= 2.55, (t(18) = -3.95, p = .003) as well as those who do not raise their hands (Mexperienced = 2.88, Mnovice = 1.64, (t(18) = - 3.58, p = .029).

Overall, hand-raising is a salient student behavior that attracts teachers’ attention, with experienced teachers having a more significant portion of the class in view and being more aware of (non)-participating students.

Authors

• Christian Kosel, Technical University of Munich

• Ricardo Böheim, Technical University of Munich

• Doris Holzberger, Technical University of Munich, TUM School of Education, Center for International Student Assessment

• Tina Seidel, Technical University of Munich