University teachers’ focus on students: Examining the relationships between visual attention, conceptions of teaching and pedagogical training

Abstract

Teachers’ focus on their students’ learning is considered central in high-quality, student-centred university teaching. This frontline eye-movement research asks whether teachers’ focus can be observed at the intersection of the visual and conceptual levels. It introduces a novel way to study teachers’ visual attention combined with verbal interpretations, including numerical ratings of the success of teaching when they observe teaching situations. Teachers’ visual attention and interpretations were further studied in connection to their prior pedagogical training and teaching experience in years. Two short videos depicting teaching during a lecture, including different types of trigger events, were presented to teachers (N = 49) who were asked to think aloud while watching. The first video’s trigger was students becoming bored during a content-focused teaching situation, and the second video’s trigger was the teacher replying in an engaging way to students’ questions in a learning-focused teaching situation. The results showed that pedagogically trained teachers paid more visual attention to the students than did their non-trained colleagues, especially in content-focused teaching situations. Teaching experience did not have any effect on visual attention or interpretation in this study. The teachers who paid more visual attention to the students in the content-focused teaching situation noticed in their interpretations that the students were not active, expressed higher learning-facilitating teaching conceptions and gave lower numerical ratings for the teaching situation. In conclusion, pedagogical training seems to promote university teachers’ ability to pay visual attention to students in teaching situations and interpret these situations from the students’ perspective, i.e. focus on student learning.