Eye Tracking in Professional Learning and Development: Uncovering Expertise Development Among Residents in Radiology

Abstract

Eye tracking is a particularly interesting technology for investigating professional learning and development in vision-intensive professions. At the workplace, professionals are often confronted with complex visual tasks that they must solve quickly. From a psychological and educational point of view, it is interesting to examine professionals’ attentional behaviours during work activities and to understand how they analyse and interpret visual input. Common to vision-intensive professions is the notion that professionals need the ability to perceive the relevant from the irrelevant and correctly interpret it. A radiologist, for instance, needs to make correct medical diagnoses based on complex visual material. Eye tracking enables the measurement of eye movements. By tracking the movements of the eyeball(s), we can learn where a person is looking, the duration of his or her gaze, and the order of the eye movements. Eye-tracking technology does not explain the underlying motives of looking; it only visualises gaze behaviour. The focus of this chapter is the meaning of eye tracking, the purposes of its application and the aspects of eye tracking that warrant attention. To illustrate the challenges and benefits of using eye-tracking technology in workplace learning, an empirical study in the medical domain is presented. A longitudinal quasi-experimental study with three measurement points was designed with the aim of investigating expertise development among eight residents of a radiology department and to identify changes in their way of analysing and diagnosing medical X-ray images during their residency.