Student Agency and Punishment Logics in Imagined Future Classroom Technologies

Educators and policymakers are increasingly trying to control youth access to technology in the classroom, while simultaneously working to deploy technology for purposes of surveillance and behavioral control. While many scholars have explored the implications of intensifying dataveillance and disciplinary practices deployed by teachers in K-12 schooling, few have investigated how students’ visions of technology deployment and use might align or diverge from those of designers and teachers. Using the resulting data from participatory design workshops and ethnographic research with students and staff in alternative hybrid schools, we explore students’ concepts of future technologies for the classroom and how these artifacts reflect student perceptions of safety and good behavior. Rather than simply accepting or resisting the role of technology in discipline and punishment as presented by technology creators, wherein disciplinary decisions are made by teachers using technology, students actively respond to these narratives to increase the objectivity and accuracy of punishment. The results of this work show how visions of future technology can sometimes reify new forms of power and other times respond to unmet student needs to exert control in the classroom.