Enacted and Unaddressed Pedagogical Opportunities During Play Sessions: A Case Analysis of Early Childhood Education Pre-Service Teachers’ Professional Vision

In early childhood education (ECE), eye-tracking research has primarily investigated in-service teachers’ visual gaze and reflective practices in pedagogical settings. However, little is known about how pre-service ECE teachers’ visual information-processing is oriented by their pedagogical goals, particularly in authentic play-based contexts. This paper addresses this gap by examining how pre-service ECE teachers adapt their professional vision during children’s play. The study involved two pre-service ECE teachers with work experience. The data consisted of video recordings and mobile eye-tracking data collected during authentic play situations involving children aged 3–5, participants’ written pedagogical plans, and cued retrospective recall interviews with mobile eye-tracking recordings as interview stimuli. Integrating these data sources enables a process-oriented analysis of professional vision by linking observable gaze patterns with participants’ retrospective accounts of what they attended to and why. The data demonstrate that professional vision is a goal-oriented process in which pre-set goals guide pre-service teachers’ gaze allocation, shaping their interpretations of children’s play in pedagogically relevant ways. The analyses also reveal instances of unaddressed pedagogical opportunities. These instances restrict teachers’ ability to reorient their attention in response to children’s initiatives. The study conceptualizes visual information-processing in play-based contexts as a dynamic relationship between pre-set pedagogical goals and ad hoc adaptation, thereby offering insights into emerging aspects of developing adaptive expertise.