Eye Movement As A Tool Of Formative Assessment

Abstract

Measuring whether students get a point or no seems a difficult task for novice teachers. So, assessing students’ understanding of the lesson is a crucial step in the teaching process. Despite its increasing importance, few teachers know how to undertake formative assessment and how to exploit its outcome in taking educational decisions. The aim of the present study is to account for psycholinguistic technique of eye movement and to suggest its exploitation in daily assessment. More specifically, it proposes that eye movements’ findings can be applicable in helping teachers understand their students’ behaviour toward the lesson. In psycholinguistics, long gaze duration, for instance, is a mark of ambiguity and participant’s concentration. To examine the adequacy of this technique, the study opts for descriptive approach to provide insights about the effectiveness and the possibility of adopting eye movements in formative assessment process. To that end, the daily assessment and practical educational decision no longer presents a barrier to teachers if they understand and interpret students’ eye movement correctly.