Introduction to empirical perspectives on teacher professional vision

Throughout our lives, and especially in school, we need to learn many new things that are sometimes hard to grasp and understand. To have a good teacher by our side who facilitates learning is key if we aim for educational success. Thus, teaching is an exceptionally relevant profession for our societies. This important role of teachers has long been studied by educational researchers, leading to many substantial insights into teacher competence, teacher expertise, or teacher knowledge. During the first two decades of the 21st century, the topic of teacher professional vision became a popular research focus. If we follow Goodwin, who coined the term, professional vision includes “the socially organized ways of seeing and understanding events that are answerable to the distinctive interest of a particular social group” (1994, p. 606). In our case, teacher professional vision thus describes teachers’ ways of seeing and understanding classroom events.