Multicultural education has become increasingly significant in contemporary classrooms, shaping how educators address equity, inclusion, and culturally responsive teaching (Banks, 2004; Gay, 2002). Across Europe and internationally, migration, mobility, and demographic change have increased cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity in schools, requiring teachers to interpret classroom interaction within varied sociocultural norms (Gay, 2002; Gorski, 2010). Importantly, classroom behaviour does not carry fixed pedagogical meaning: the same observable event may be interpreted differently across cultural contexts.  This calls why teachers need situation-specific competencies to interpret classroom events equitably in multicultural settings (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995).

Teachers’ interpretations of culturally patterned behaviour are shaped not only by professional knowledge but also by beliefs, instructional self-efficacy, cultural background, exposure to diversity, and institutional norms (Pajares, 1992; Richardson, 2003; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001). Years of experience are not equivalent to experience in culturally diverse classrooms; without explicit engagement with diversity, professional experience may reinforce dominant norms and lead to systematic misinterpretation and inequitable responses (Gay, 2018; Santamaria, 2009; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). This issue is highly relevant to European debates on equity, inclusion, and teacher preparedness for diverse learners.

Against this background, this study presents a scoping review of teacher professional vision (TPV) in multicultural classrooms. TPV is defined as teachers’ situation-specific capacity to selectively attend to instructionally relevant classroom events (perception), interpret these events using professional knowledge and instructional goals (interpretation), and consider possible pedagogical responses (decision-making) (Sherin, 2001; van Es & Sherin, 2008). While professional vision research often distinguishes noticing and reasoning (Blomberg et al., 2011; Sherin & van Es, 2009), this review treats TPV as an overarching construct encompassing perception, interpretation, and response consideration. Teacher noticing is used narrowly to refer to the perceptual component of TPV, consistent with prior work distinguishing selective attention from interpretive reasoning (van Es & Sherin, 2002; Sherin & van Es, 2009). This mapping is necessary because reviewed studies use diverse terminology (e.g., attending, selective attention, gaze behaviour), especially in eye-tracking research (Jacobs et al., 2010; Stahnke et al., 2016).

The review is grounded in Goodwin’s (1994) sociocultural account of professional vision as socially shared expertise shaped by historically situated norms of practice. Because professional ways of seeing are not culturally neutral, teachers’ socially learned “ways of seeing” may not align with students’ culturally patterned participation, increasing the likelihood of bias in interpretation. Building on this account, the review applies the Perception-Interpretation-Decision model (PID) as an integrative framework (Blömeke et al., 2015), conceptualizing TPV as part of a competence continuum linking situation-specific skills with resources such as beliefs, self-efficacy, and experience. This framework supports international interpretation by making visible how cultural-contextual norms interact with teachers’ competence resources.

A multicultural classroom is defined as an instructional context in which cultural, linguistic, ethnic, or migratory diversity among students is substantively relevant to teaching and learning (Banks, 2004). The review addresses three research questions:
(RQ1) How is TPV analysed and operationalized in multicultural classroom research?
(RQ2) Which individual and contextual factors (e.g., beliefs, self-efficacy, teaching experience, cultural context) are associated with variation in TPV?
(RQ3) Which professional development designs and methodological approaches are used to support or examine TPV in culturally diverse contexts?

Analyzing evidence across European and international studies, this review contributes to conceptual clarity in TPV research, identification of methodological and contextual gaps, and guidance for teacher education and professional development. Practically, it informs European and international teacher-education agendas by highlighting the need for structured learning opportunities that support teachers’ culturally responsive interpretation and equitable instructional decision-making.

This study employed a scoping review design to map and analyze empirical research on teacher professional vision (TPV) in multicultural classroom contexts. The review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines (Tricco et al., 2018). A scoping approach was selected due to the conceptual diversity, methodological heterogeneity, and emerging nature of research on TPV in multicultural settings, allowing systematic mapping of key concepts, approaches, and research gaps (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005; Levac et al., 2010). A comprehensive search was conducted in January 2025 across three electronic databases: EBSCO, Web of Science, and Scopus. Search terms were developed to capture studies addressing teacher professional vision and related constructs (e.g., teacher noticing, perception, interpretation, decision-making), combined with terms referring to multicultural or culturally diverse classrooms (e.g., multicultural classroom, multicultural education, cultural competence, teacher cultural background). Boolean operators (AND/OR) were used to account for terminological variation across research traditions. Retrieved records were managed in an Excel spreadsheet and screened by the first author. Studies were included if they empirically examined TPV or its components within multicultural classroom contexts. Multicultural relevance was operationalized through at least one of the following: (a) explicitly diverse student populations, (b) cross-cultural or cross-national classroom comparisons, and/or (c) an analytic focus on culture, diversity, equity, or bias as shaping teachers’ situation-specific sense-making. Both pre-service and in-service teacher populations were eligible. Grade level was not used as an exclusion criterion due to the limited number of empirical studies in this area; where reported, grade level was extracted descriptively. Studies were excluded if they (1) examined TPV/noticing outside multicultural contexts (n = 5), (2) focused solely on monocultural settings (n = 4), or (3) addressed multicultural education conceptually without empirical investigation of TPV (n = 4). Nine studies were retained. Data extraction followed a structured, question-driven framework aligned with the review objectives. Extracted elements included publication details, operationalization of TPV components (perception, interpretation, decision-making), methodology (e.g., eye-tracking, video-based tasks, interviews, surveys), participant characteristics, and multicultural context features. Two researchers independently coded all studies using predefined categories and achieved high interrater reliability (Cohen’s κ = .90). Discrepancies were resolved through discussion. The synthesis emphasizes how TPV has been studied across “in-action” (e.g., eye-tracking of perceptual attention) and “on-action” approaches (e.g., retrospective video-based reflection), and how individual resources and professional learning elements were examined across studies.

This scoping review analyzed evidence on teacher professional vision (TPV) in multicultural classroom contexts across nine empirical studies from Europe, North America, and East Asia. The reviewed literature demonstrates substantial methodological diversity: TPV was investigated through eye-tracking studies capturing teachers’ perceptual attention “in action” (Keskin & Gegenfurtner, 2023; McIntyre & Foulsham, 2018; McIntyre et al., 2020), video-based and ethnographic designs examining interpretive reasoning “on action” (Cunningham, 2021; Dreher et al., 2020; Luna et al., 2023), and survey/mixed-method approaches linking professional vision to beliefs and self-efficacy through video-based judgement tasks (Keppens et al., 2019, 2021; Roose et al., 2024). Overall, findings highlight that professional vision is not a stable or universal capacity but a situation-specific, culturally situated process shaped by intersecting personal and contextual resources. Across studies, noticing visible markers of diversity (e.g., language, ethnicity) emerged as a necessary but insufficient condition for culturally responsive teaching. Eye-tracking findings indicate that increased visual attention to minoritised students does not reliably translate into equitable interpretation or instructional action and may reflect heightened monitoring rather than inclusion (Keskin & Gegenfurtner, 2023). Variation in TPV was most consistently associated with interpretive reasoning rather than perception alone. Diversity-related beliefs and inclusive instructional self-efficacy shaped teachers’ sense-making and judgement of classroom interaction, functioning as filters for interpretation (Keppens et al., 2019, 2021; Roose et al., 2024). Cultural-contextual norms influenced both perceptual organisation and evaluative standards, illustrating cross-national differences in what counts as instructional quality (Dreher et al., 2020; McIntyre et al., 2020). Professional development approaches (e.g., video clubs, experiential learning) supported more culturally grounded reasoning when combined with guided reflection and explicit cultural prompts, yet long-term effects remain underexplored (Cunningham, 2021; Luna et al., 2023). The review identifies the need for longitudinal, multi-method, and cross-cultural research to better connect perception, interpretation, and decision-making in multicultural classrooms

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