An exploration of students’, parents’, and teachers’ experiences with behaviour-tracking apps in secondary schools.
Recently, a proliferation of behaviour-tracking apps has infiltrated schools as a tool to track and monitor students' classroom behaviour. Emerging literature suggests it can harm children's development and well-being and fundamentally change traditional classroom behaviour management (Manolev et al., 2019; Williamson, 2017). However, empirical research is scarce despite the technology expanding throughout schools globally. There are concerns that this technology exacerbates existing educational inequalities of class, race and dis/ability; promotes controlling techniques of discipline; and impacts relationships and sense of self. Students, parents, and teachers' experiences of behaviour-tracking apps are not yet fully understood. As a society, the data collection of children is becoming increasingly pervasive, with the impact and risks still unknown and little evidence of the strategies in place to safeguard children’s rights. Given the growth in uptake, schools are increasingly becoming the sites of data surveillance, digitally tracking and monitoring students.
Through an ethnography of a secondary school using the behaviour-tracking app ClassCharts, this research explores the experiences of stakeholders, students, parents, and teachers to examine how this technology is experienced and perceived. By giving voice to these different stakeholders, especially the students, I can provide a narrative to understand how these technological practices shape their experiences and how they manifest inside and outside the classroom. My research will contribute empirical, much-needed knowledge that is currently incomplete and provide policy recommendations on the use of behaviour-tracking apps in
schools. The research speaks to the theme of Transformative Technologies for Society, especially focusing on ‘digital technologies in education’.