Eye Dominance Can Affect Class Response to Teacher
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Knowing whether you are a right-eyed or left-eyed teacher can make a great difference in your effectiveness as a fire instructor. Most persons favor the use of one eye in preference to the other while listening or speaking and their perceptions are noticeably different when they are unable to use their favored eye.
While observing student teachers and fire instructors in action, it was noticed that some student teachers would pay attention to portions of their class and almost completely ignore other parts. Students who were ignored responded by turning off and in the case of some high school sophomores, became disruptive. In the majority of cases, the problem was that each instructor had a preferred eye and when properly placed in the classroom, had a more successful teaching experience.
Dominant eye test
To determine whether you are right or left-eyed, perform the following test: (1) With both eyes open, point to a distant object, such as a picture across the room or a distant tree. (2) With both eyes still open, use your free hand to cover one of your eyes. (3) Note whether your finger is still lined up with the distant object. If after covering one eye, the object in the distance is still lined up with your finger, then you are “eyed” the same as the uncovered eye.
For example, if you covered your left eye and your finger stayed lined up with the object, you are right-eyed.
Some difficulties in the classroom arise when teachers instruct from the side of the room that does not correspond to their “eyeness.” The righteyed teacher pays greater attention to the right field of view and slights the left side of the class, most noticeably the outer edges. When student teachers were asked if a certain pupil was present or absent that day, the correct response depended largely on whether that pupil was in the teacher’s preferred field of view.
As instructors mature in their teaching, they normally adjust naturally to this situation, but it has been found that the adjustment can be accelerated if the teachers are advised of their eyeness early in their student-teaching careers.
Instructors may compensate for their eyeness in many ways. Some move their desks or podium to the side of the room from which they will use their preferred field of view exclusively. Othes make a concerted effort to walk through the class and face the students from many different positions during a lesson. Whatever method a teacher uses, it is important to note that the physical layout of the room may have to be changed to accommodate a specific teacher.
The differences between left-eyed and right-eyed persons became more obvious after observations were made at fire department management and operations seminars where eight officers were spaced around a rectangular table and two leaders sat across from one another. Leader A was the formal leader while leader B was the informal leader. The discussion was charted for 20 minutes by connecting lines on a paper from one circle to another, each circle representing one person at the table. This method is called charting a discussogram. After the discussogram was examined for patterns, it was possible to predict if the leaders would test out right-eyed or left-eyed.
When two right-eyed leaders sat opposite each other, the discussogram was neatly divided in half, each leader controlling one half of the table. When a left-eyed and a right-eyed leader sat opposite each other, one half of the table was noticeably ignored.
Rules of thumb
Although the number of groups analyzed has been small, the trend seems to be quite clear and some rules of thumb can be written:
- Group leaders should sit in a place that commands their preferred field of view.
- Informal leaders might control a group if their field of view commands more than that of the formal leader.
- To be better seen and heard by a leader, sit in the leader’s preferred field of view.
A short observation of a speaker or a discussion leader is all that is necessary to determine the leader’s preferred eye. It is usually interesting and amusing to predict a person’s eyeness and then have it confirmed by test. During the FDIC in Memphis last March, such informal tests were done during both large and small group addresses with 100 percent predictability. It works.
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