Eye Teach Stats

Author name: RosaA

Conferences

Upcoming: Workshop at ECER 2026

On 18 August 2026, our team will lead the workshop “From Eye Movements to Instructional Design” at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) 2026 in Tampere, Finland, in Network 24 – Mathematics Education Research. The workshop introduces teacher educators and researchers to eye-tracking vignettes as a tool for diagnosing students’ misinterpretations of statistical graphs, dotplots, case-value plots, histograms, and boxplots, combining students’ answers, verbal explanations, and eye-movement data. Participants will work with an example vignette to identify patterns in students’ reasoning, discuss how these insights can inform instructional decisions, and reflect on how eye-tracking vignettes can be integrated into their own teaching, teacher education, or research contexts.

Conferences

Upcoming: Presentation at WOMO 2026

On 30 September 2026, Wim Van Dooren will present the lecture “Misinterpretaties van grafieken – Een inkijk in onderzoek naar oorzaken en remedies” (“Misinterpretations of Graphs – Insights into Research on Causes and Remedies”) at WOMO (Wiskundeonderwijs meets Onderzoek), a conference organised by the VVWL (Vlaamse Vereniging Wiskunde Leraars). The lecture will address the systematic errors students make when interpreting statistical graphs such as boxplots and histograms — misinterpretations that persist even into higher education and among people who regularly work with such graphs. Drawing on research and eye-tracking data, Van Dooren will explore where these misinterpretations originate and how they can be addressed or prevented in teaching.

Conferences

Eye-Teach-Stats at ICOTS12 in Brisbane

From 13 to 14 July 2026, our team presented three contributions at the 12th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS12) in Brisbane, Australia. In the session “Eye-Tracking and Skills in the Context of Data Visualisation,” Lonneke Boels presented “How Teachers Make Sense of Students’ Misinterpreting Statistical Graphs: Teachers’ Responses to Eye-Tracking Vignettes,” while Ayline Heursen presented “Supporting the Understanding of Students’ Misinterpretation of Statistical Graphs – an Analysis of Processing Data of Eye-Tracking Vignettes.” Ayline Heursen also presented the poster “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Eye-Tracking Vignettes for Developing Teachers’ Diagnostic Skills in Statistical Graph Interpretation Preliminary Findings from an Ongoing Study,” sharing preliminary findings from the project’s ongoing evaluation study.

Conferences

Workshop at Onderwijs Research Dagen (ORD) 2026

On 2 July 2026, Vuslat Şeker led a 90-minute workshop at the Onderwijs Research Dagen (ORD) 2026 in Utrecht, with co-authors Corina Breukink, Jop Schaap, Anita Alexander, and Lonneke Boels, titled “Hoe denken leerlingen over statistische diagrammen? Inzicht in leerprocessen met oogbewegingsdata” (“How do students think about statistical graphs? Insight into learning processes through eye-tracking data”). Teacher educators and researchers explored how eye-tracking vignettes can help teachers interpret students’ answers and guide their reasoning about statistical graphs such as histograms and case-value plots.

Conferences

Presentation at the Dutch Conference on Mathematics Education Research (DREAM) 2026

On 24 June 2026, Vuslat Şeker and Lonneke Boels presented at the first Dutch Conference on Mathematics Education Research (DREAM), held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Their presentation, “Using Eye-Tracking Vignettes to Explore Teachers’ Interpretation of Students’ Reasoning: A Case Study,” shared a case study of how a teacher engaged with an eye-tracking vignette to interpret a student’s reasoning about a statistical graph. DREAM brought together researchers from across all levels of mathematics education in the Netherlands, offering a valuable opportunity to introduce Eye-Teach-Stats to a growing national community of mathematics education researchers.

Project

Final Face-to-Face Meeting in Heidelberg

The Eye-Teach-Stats consortium came together one final time in Heidelberg on 11-12 June 2026 to reflect on nearly three years of collaboration and discuss the project’s final deliverables. Looking back on the journey — from our first online kick-off meeting in 2023 to this final gathering — it was inspiring to see how a shared research idea had evolved into a complete teacher education programme built around eye-tracking research.

Conferences

Presentation at WiskundeConnect 2026

On 29 April 2026, Wim Van Dooren presented the session “Misinterpretaties van grafieken – Een inkijk in onderzoek naar oorzaken en remedies” (“Misinterpretations of Graphs – Insights into Research on Causes and Remedies”) at WiskundeConnect, the first edition of a new study day for mathematics teachers organised by Platform Wiskunde Vlaanderen, VVWL, and CNO (University of Antwerp) in Brussels. The session explored the systematic errors students make when interpreting statistical graphs such as histograms and boxplots, and their origins in research. Participants also had the chance to explore the Eye-Teach-Stats learning materials, which show how these errors can be diagnosed through eye-tracking data and how teachers can respond to them.

Publishing

Eye-Teach-Stats in Euclides: Oog voor Fouten

In April 2026, Vuslat Şeker, Lonneke Boels, and Anita Alexander published “Oog voor fouten: Oogbewegingsvignetten als hulpmiddel bij het begrijpen van leerlingenfouten in statistische diagrammen” (“An Eye for Errors: Eye-Tracking Vignettes as a Tool for Understanding Student Errors in Statistical Graphs”) in Euclides, the journal of the Dutch Association of Mathematics Teachers (NVvW). The article introduces Dutch mathematics teachers to how eye-tracking vignettes can help them recognise and respond to the systematic errors students make when interpreting statistical graphs — combining students’ answers, explanations, and gaze behaviour to make their reasoning about data distributions visible. Şeker, V., Boels, L., & Alexander, A. (2026). Oog voor fouten: Oogbewegingsvignetten als hulpmiddel bij het begrijpen van leerlingenfouten in statistische diagrammen. Euclides, 101, 50–53. 

Conferences

Presentation at the GDM Annual Conference 2026

From 2 to 6 March 2026, Ayline Heursen presented the paper “Systematischen Fehlern bei der Interpretation statistischer Graphen durch Lehrkräftebildung begegnen” (“Countering Systematic Errors in the Interpretation of Statistical Graphs through Teacher Education”) at the 59th Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Didaktik der Mathematik (GDM) in Wuppertal, Germany. The paper was co-authored by Ayline Heursen, Vuslat Şeker, Anita Alexander, Martin Abt, Lonneke Boels, Wim Van Dooren, Frank Reinhold, Saskia Schreiter, and Markus Vogel. The presentation showed how the project’s eye-tracking vignettes serve as teacher education materials that help teachers develop their diagnostic skills and respond to students’ reasoning.

Publishing

Conference Proceedings Published: IASE 2025 Satellite Conference

The full paper behind our IASE 2025 Satellite Conference presentation, “Pre-service teachers’ use of eye-tracking data to diagnose students’ misinterpretations in statistical graphs,” is now openly available in the IASE Conference Proceedings Series (DOI: 10.52041/iase25.143), authored by Vuslat Şeker, Lonneke Boels, Anita Alexander, Ayline Heursen, Saskia Schreiter, Wim Van Dooren, Frank Reinhold, Martin Abt, and Markus Vogel. Şeker, V., Boels, L., Alexander, A., Heursen, A., Schreiter, S., Van Dooren, W., Reinhold, F., Abt, M., & Vogel, M. (2026). Pre-service teachers’ use of eye-tracking data to diagnose students’ misinterpretations in statistical graphs. In L. Birk, G. Loth, L. Jotzo, K. Binder, & D. Frischemeier (Eds.), Statistics and data science education in STEAM: Proceedings of the IASE 2025 Satellite Conference. International Association for Statistical Education. https://doi.org/10.52041/iase25.143

ERASMUS+ RESEARCH PROJECT

Be part of the
Eye Teach Stats study

Interested in improving your understanding of students’ interpretation of statistical graphs? Take our free online professional development course and contribute to the Eye Teach Stats project.

~2.5 hours in total · Pretest, 10 vignettes & posttest · Voluntary & anonymous

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