Educators and synoptic prudentialism: Educator reflections on educator training, student surveillance and using technology for student outreach

Abstract

Surveillance plays several interrelated and essential roles in contemporary education. In the current article, we explore the understandings and experiences of educators related to surveillance; especially the ‘vertical’ surveillance ‘from below’ students themselves direct towards educators both inside and outside of the classroom (referred to as ‘sousveillance’). We also explore the prudential ‘intrapersonal’ and reflexive surveillance undertaken by educators to align and adjust to the expectations of educator professionalization, including during educator training, especially in terms of their social media use and under a context of synoptic prudentialism in schools. Synoptic prudentialism refers to the reflexive actions and adjustments by individuals and organizations in response to an acute awareness of widespread social surveillance—the many watching the few. Educators noted risks posed by surveillance, including sources of potential harm, both personal and professional. Findings reveal that, reinforced by the legal scare stories encountered during educator training programs, educators feel overwhelmingly vulnerable to the potential sousveillance of students, and are receiving little advice beyond the requirement to ‘be careful’. We explore educators’ privacy management strategies in response, for example, in response to concerns over students capturing videos in the classroom where situations may be taken out of context. This prudential framework, moreover, may also be inhibiting educators’ ability to conduct outreach with students to detect and respond to online mediated conflict and harm.