How professional knowledge and general cognitive abilities relate to pre-service teachers’ professional vision

Abstract

Teachers’ professional vision as ability to notice and interpret relevant classroom events is based on professional knowledge. With regard to the circumvention-of-limits hypothesis, pre-service teachers’ professional vision might as well be conditioned by individual differences in their general cognitive abilities. We investigated the relationship between pre-service teachers’ professional vision and general cognitive abilities as well as whether their professional knowledge moderates this relationship (N = 91, thereof 49 bachelor and 42 master students). Regression analyses confirmed the hypothesized effect of professional knowledge on professional vision. Furthermore, only selective attention as part of general cognitive abilities predicted professional vision in open-response video-based tasks, while the moderation effect could not be corroborated. The findings confirm professional vision as knowledge-based process, but also underline that individual differences in general cognitive abilities might affect and need to be considered when addressing professional vision with video clips.