Student's Perspective and Teachers' Metacognition: Applications of Eye-Tracking in Education and Scientific Research in Schools

This Perspective article discusses the possible contributions of eye-tracking (ET) to the field of Educational Neuroscience based on an application of this tool at schools. We sought to explore the teachers' view of ET videos recorded while students solved mathematical problems. More than 90% of the teachers could predict with great accuracy whether the students had answered the questions correctly or not based solely on the information provided by the ET videos. Almost all participants tried to translate the students' thoughts to understand the strategy used by the children. Our results highlight the relevance of qualitative analysis to identify the gaze strategies used by students. We propose that ET allows teachers to gain critical feedback about students' behavior during problem-solving. Most previous studies tend to emphasize the benefits of ET applications to explore learners' cognition. Our findings point that this system can also be useful to investigate teachers' cognition by providing metacognitive experiences.

Automated summary

This article discusses the possible contributions of eye-tracking (ET) to Educational Neuroscience through the use of this tool in schools. By having teachers view ET videos of students solving math problems, it was found that the tool could accurately predict student performance and provide insights into their cognitive strategies. Qualitative analysis was shown to be important in identifying students' gaze strategies and providing valuable feedback on student behavior.