Session Information
25 SES 11, Digital and Civic Spaces
Paper/Video Session
Contribution
This study explores how school principals integrate Closed-Circuit TV systems (CCTVs) in their educational practices. It also analyzes the implications of these practices on schools’ hidden human rights curriculum, and particularly on the lessons that the CCTVs’ pedagogies convey about due process, privacy, and autonomy. The premise for the discussion is that school curricula convey socialization messages, not only through explicit content of academic instruction, but also through the hidden curriculum, which comprises the school ethos, practices, and ecologies (see e.g., Kayama, Haight, Gibson, & Wilson, 2015).
Schools have increasingly become a locus of continuous surveillance, applying various technological strategies, such as biometric fingerprint identification systems, radio-frequency identification tags, metal detectors, and X-ray inspection of student packs, as well as policing practices of drug testing, searches, and school officers (see e.g., Kupchik, 2010; Monahan & Torres, 2009; Taylor, 2013).
Empirical studies have shown that school CCTVs are used for monitoring various kinds of behaviors: violence, vandalism, theft, loitering, exam cheating, and alcohol or drug use (e.g., Hope, 2009; Taylor, 2013). Hope (2009) identified three purposes of school CCTVs: access control, which is concerned with protecting the physical boundaries of the school from external threats; conduct control, which includes direct physical intervention as a response to real-time observation; and evidence gathering, in order to investigate disciplinary events. Hope based his study on eight interviews with school and college officials and two interviews with municipal officials. Our study focuses on the educational usages that Hope identified––conduct control and evidence gathering, uses rich empirical data to develop these categories, and adds a new category: employing CCTVs as a mechanism to produce trust.
Other studies, building on various disciplinary approaches, have analyzed the educational implications of school CCTVs. Warnick (2007) offered an ethical analysis, identifying two kinds of educational impacts of school CCTVs: the permanency of the records works against an ethos of growth and change, and their function undermines the development of trust. Warnick’s insights assist in understanding why some schools eschew the use of surveillance systems, in order to maintain the school’s climate of trust (see Binkhorst & Kingma, 2012). Several studies applied criminological theories to analyze the educational impacts of school CCTV systems. Hope (2009) argued that the use of school CCTVs reflects a “morality of low expectation,” in which crime and deviancy become perceived as mundane, inevitable, everyday occurrences (p. 903). Monahan (2006) contended that surveillance systems engender identity constructions of students as either victims or criminals. Similarly, Hirschfield and Celinska (2011) argued that surveillance cameras are part of wider processes that signal a shift from a discretionary student disciplinary framework to a crime-control paradigm (see also Kupchik, 2010). Another thread in the literature has explored children’s perceptions regarding school CCTVs (Bracy, 2011; McCahill & Finn 2010; Taylor, 2010).
The reviewed studies indicate that CCTVs have become part of schools’ pedagogies and comprise part of their hidden curriculum. Our study examines a yet unexplored aspect of school surveillance, namely the implications of CCTVs on human rights education. The mounting scholarship regarding human rights education shows that it should not limit itself to exploring textbooks and class discussions; it should incorporate the various ways children practice and experience their rights in their everyday lives (e.g., Bajaj, 2011; Osler & Starkey, 2010; Tibbitts, 2002). These practices shape the rights consciousness (Morrill, Edelman, Tyson, & Arum, 2010) of the citizens-to-be. When children’s rights are protected, they are likely to view these rights as more significant (Hart, Pavlovic, & Zeidner, 2001). Thus, the pedagogies of the CCTVs may have much more impact on students than abstract civics lessons about human rights.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bajaj, M. (2011). Human rights education: Ideology, location, and approaches. Human Rights Quarterly, 33(2), 481-508. Binkhorst, J., & Kingma, S. F. (2012). Safety vs. reputation: Risk controversies in emerging policy networks regarding school safety in the Netherlands. Journal of Risk Research, 15(8), 913-935. Hart, S. N., Pavlovicb, Z., & Zeidner, M. (2001). The ISPA cross-national children’s rights research project. School Psychology International, 22(2), 99-129. Hirschfield, P. J., & Celinska, K. (2011). Beyond fear: Sociological perspectives on the criminalization of school discipline. Sociology Compass, 5(1), 1-12. Hope, A. (2009). CCTV, school surveillance and social control. British Educational Research Journal, 35(6), 891-907. Kayama, M., Haight, W., Gibson, P. A., & Wilson, R. (2015). Use of criminal justice language in personal narratives of out-of-school suspensions: Black students, caregivers, and educators. Children and Youth Services Review, 51, 26-35. Kupchik, A. (2010). Homeroom security: School discipline in an age of fear. New York: New York University Press. McCahill, M., & Finn, R. (2010). The social impact of surveillance in three UK schools: Angels, devils and teen mums. Surveillance & Society, 7(3/4), 273-289. Monahan, T. (2006). The surveillance curriculum: Risk management and social control in the neoliberal school. In T. Monahan (Ed.), Surveillance and security: Technological politics and power in everyday life (pp. 109–124). London: Routledge. Monahan, T., & Torres, R. D. (2009). Schools under surveillance: Cultures of control in public education. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Morrill, C., Edelman, L. B., Tyson, K., & Arum, R. (2010). Legal mobilization in schools: The paradox of rights and race among youth. Law & Society Review, 44(3/4), 651-694. Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2010). Teachers and human rights education. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham. Rosenthal, S. B., & Buchholz, R. A. (2000). The empirical-normative split in business ethics: A pragmatic alternative. Business Ethics Quarterly, 10(02), 399-408. Steiner, J. (2012). The foundations of deliberative democracy: Empirical research and normative implications. New York: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, E. (2010). I spy with my little eye: The use of CCTV in schools and the impact on privacy. The Sociological Review, 58(3), 381-405. Taylor, E. (2013). Surveillance schools: Security, discipline and control in contemporary education. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Tibbitts, F. (2002). Understanding what we do: Emerging models for human rights education. International Review of Education, 48(3-4), 159-171. Warnick, B. (2007). Surveillance cameras in schools: An ethical analysis. Harvard Educational Review, 77(3), 317-343.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.