The Future of Eye Tracking in Teacher Competence Research: Towards In-Action, Multimodal, Mixed-Methods and More Theory-Driven Research in Education

Mobile eye tracking has opened up new possibilities for studying teachers’ visual attention as it unfolds in authentic classroom settings, yet the field continues to face important theoretical and methodological challenges. This reflective study revisits three empirical studies, all stemming from a single large-scale mobile eye-tracking project in early childhood education, in order to develop a new theoretical framework, methodological insights, and recommendations for future eye-tracking research in education. Across the three studies, quantitative eye-tracking data, stimulated recall interviews, and multimodal conversation analysis were combined to examine how teachers distribute their visual attention among children, how they reason about their own gaze behaviour, and how gaze relates to patterns of classroom interaction. These three empirical studies jointly show that linguistically vulnerable children are overlooked and that this cannot be explained with a strict dichotomy between intentional and unintentional processes, but instead operates along a continuum shaped by teachers’ expectations, beliefs, and biases. Building on these insights, this study proposes adaptations to existing theoretical frameworks on teacher attention and professional vision, rendering them eye-tracking-informed, and argues for a shift towards in-action, multimodal, mixed-methods, and theory-driven eye-tracking research in educational settings. Implications for future research design on data triangulation and technological development are discussed.