The classroom is a complex environment where multiple issues occur simultaneously requiring the teachers’ immediate visual attention. The urgency, immediacy, and simultaneity arising from classroom situations could be challenging for the teachers to manage. Moreover, the way teachers focus their visual attention on students can vary due to several teacher- and student-related factors.
Therefore, M.A (Educational Leadership) Saswati Chaudhuri studied teachers’ visual focus of attention and its related factors in Grade 1 classrooms with particular focus on teacher stress, students’ academic skills and teacher-student relationships. The doctoral research is part of the wider Teacher and Student Stress and Interaction in Classroom (TESSI) research project.
Eye tracking brought new opportunities to classroom research
Previously, teachers’ visual focus of attention in terms of their noticing and reasoning of the noticed classroom situations have been studied using classroom video recordings wherein teachers either watch their own or other teacher’s video recordings to reflect on their teaching practices. Recently, the novel eye-tracking methodology has gained immense popularity in educational research to study where teachers look and for how long during lessons. In this dissertation, mobile eye-tracking technology has been used to measure teachers’ visual focus of attention. However, teachers’ eye movements alone would not give much information unless it is combined with other sources of information. When teachers’ duration of visual attention on students was combined with teacher stress, students’ academic skill levels, and teacher-student relationships, some interesting results emerged.
Teacher- and student-specific factors affect the teacher's visual attention
The doctoral research results showed that teacher- and student-specific factors are connected to the teacher's visual attention to students in class. Firstly, the results showed that the more stressed the teacher was, the less individual attention the teacher gave to the students. Secondly, teachers paid more attention to students for whom they reported providing more individual support in basic academic skills and if the student's basic academic skills were low. Thirdly, teachers focused their visual attention on students despite their perceptions of closeness and conflict related to the students. Additionally, student’s task-avoidant behavior had a moderating effect on the way teachers’ perception of closeness and conflict related to teachers’ visual focus of attention.
The results give an important message that different teacher- and student-specific factors influence how teachers pay attention to their students visually in class. In the future, it would be necessary to use the eye tracking method in teacher training, so that teachers' conscious visual attention to students can be practiced. It is important for teachers to be aware of various factors related to themselves and their students that can affect their attention and classroom activities.
M.A Saswati Chaudhuri's doctoral thesis in education "Teachers' visual focus of attention and related factors in Grade 1 classrooms: Teacher stress, students' academic skills and teacher–student relationships" will be reviewed on Friday 15.12.2023 from 12 noon in the Alfa hall of the Agora building of the University of Jyväskylä. The opponent is Professor Robert Klassen (University of Oxford) and the custos is Professor Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen (University of Jyväskylä). The language of the dissertation is English.
The dissertation can be read in the JYX publication archive: https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/92117.
The defense event will be streamed online in the following link: https://r.jyu.fi/dissertation-chaudhuri-151223.
