In their hands: Multimodal learning analytics as reflective-practice resources empowering mathematics teachers’ professional development

Background
Educational researchers have been using multimodal data (e.g., eye-tracking) to study teachers’ instructional practices. Yet, by and large, these technologies have not been handed over to teachers as resources for self-reflection.

Aims
This exploratory study aimed to develop and evaluate novel methodologies for supporting teachers in using multimodal data, specifically eye-tracking-overlaid multiple-point-of-view videos, as resources for deepening their understanding of learning and teaching.

Sample and methods
Five pre-service mathematics teachers (PSMT) participated in this study. First, they collaboratively constructed a body-scale polyhedron while wearing eye-tracking devices. In a subsequent structured reflection session, the participants collectively analyzed eye-tracking-overlaid multiple-point-of-view recordings of their construction activity. Drawing on Goodwin's Co-Operative Action theory, the researchers then qualitatively micro-analyzed the PSMTs' individual and interactive multimodal behaviors in both activities.

Results
The technology enabled the PSMTs to highlight, code, and elaborate on nuanced aspects of individuals’ perceptual and social behaviors during the construction activity. These insights led to a spontaneous generalization of pedagogical implications for their own prospective facilitation of classroom group work.

Conclusions
Supplementing PSMTs' video-based reflection on their own activity with multiple-point-of-view gaze data from their mobile eye trackers enriches the PSMTs’ microgenetic analysis of their own collaborative multimodal learning process, in turn potentially leading more generally to pedagogical inferences for their own prospective professional practice.