POTENTIAL AND LIMITATIONS OF THE USE OF EYE-TRACKING TECHNOLOGY IN THE PROFESSIONAL VISION RESEARCH

Eye-tracking technology is becoming a valuable research tool in psychology and social sciences. The primary objective of our current project is to verify the hypotheses about differences in the identification and interpretation of the inappropriate behaviour of children in the classroom depending on the length of teaching practice and personality characteristics of teachers. Traditionally, researchers investigating professional vision of teachers use the methods of observing and commenting on school situations, either directly in the classroom or using the classroom videos. Our research intention is to extend this traditional methodology and to analyse teachers` eye movements and gaze while watching video sequences from the classroom. However, the use of eye-tracking technology to monitor complex dynamic stimuli (video) compared to a static image or textual stimuli (e.g. study materials) brings some technological and interpretative challenges. This study aims to discuss these problems based on the pilot testing (N = 15) of this research design.