Teacher working in a whole class setting in English as a foreign language lessons: insights from an eye-tracking study

This paper aims to discuss the affordances of eye-tracking technology used in teacher research and present partial results of a pilot study that focuses on teacher’s gaze during instruction. We focus on English as a foreign language (EFL) lessons and specifically on such classroom situations that have a communicative potential. We investigate how the teacher distributes his gaze when working with the whole class (e.g. in whole class discussions). One EFL teacher at lower secondary school participated in the pilot study. Using eye-tracking glasses (SMI), we collected data in three lessons in 7th grade. Additional context data was collected both during and after the lesson (including teacher’s comments). The data is being analysed using SMI BeGaze software (frequency and duration of fixations on selected areas of interest).