The purpose, description and development of teachers’ professional seeing a dialogue between Hattie and Schön

Abstract

A pedagogy of vision and seeing has a long history. Teachers’ professional vision, seeing and noticing are today regarded as important factors that affect the quality of their teaching and are considered important to develop. The article argues that there is a need to gain a deeper understanding of teachers’ professional vision, seeing and noticing and how they can be developed by creating bridges between various research traditions. Drawing on hermeneutic conversation as a method, the study addresses how two different researchers, John Hattie and Donald Schön, describe a) the purpose of teachers’ vision, seeing and noticing, b) what kind of development regarding teachers’ vision, seeing and noticing they suggest and c) where plausible similarities and/or differences between their reasoning can be found. The article’s major contribution is that it provides a metacognitive roadmap for professionals and educational researchers that both shows where Schön and Hattie intersect and where their views of teachers’ professional vision, seeing and noticing differ.