Objectives

This study explores how Israeli teachers perceive pupils’ privacy, focusing on CCTV surveillance. This context enables a unique inquiry into teachers’ perceptions of pupils’ privacy in two kinds of spaces: 1. classrooms, where both teachers and pupils are the target of surveillance; and 2. hallways and schoolyards, where the surveillance is targeted mainly at pupils.

There is a lack of studies regarding teacher perceptions of pupil surveillance (Perry-Hazan & Birnhack 2019). CCTV is a relatively old surveillance technology that is widely used in public spaces. Currently, new school surveillance technologies have been introduced in schools, including automated fingerprint identification systems, facial recognition systems, learning analytics, and online monitoring (Hope 2015; Taylor & Rooney 2017). Examining educators’ moral perceptions concerning a surveillance tool that they have already normalized is important, as it may anticipate how they would accept newer surveillance technologies that derogate pupils’ privacy. 

Theoretical Framework

Law provides cultural schemas that people use to understand their everyday experiences (Marshall 2005). The term legal consciousness is applied to explore these understandings and their influence. One scholarly thread of the study of legal consciousness has focused on rights consciousness. While numerous studies examined how rights are mobilized, the study of rights consciousness examines how rights are perceived (Munkres 2008), and what processes motivate people to define problems and obstacles in terms of rights (Merry 2003). Most studies on rights consciousness have focused on disempowered groups, including children (e.g. Birnhack, Perry-Hazan, & German Ben-Hayun 2018; Morrill, Tyson, Edelman, & Arum 2010; Velez 2017). Other studies explored the legal consciousness of human rights activists, or their efforts to mobilize rights by cultivating human rights consciousness (on mobilization of educational rights, see Paris 2010; Newman 2013).

Only few studies have focused on individuals who are responsible for the rights of others (Edelman, Erlanger, & Lande 1993; Munkers 2008; Tinkler 2012). In our study on the decision-making processes of Israeli school principals in installing CCTV systems in schools (Perry-Hazan & Birnhack 2016), we found, inter alia, that principals merged managerial considerations–– school’s security and safety and the systems’ cost and effectiveness––with personal conceptions of human rights and education. The principals all understood that the decision to install CCTV systems constrained both pupils’ and teachers’ privacy, and their responses echoed various theories of privacy.

In the current study, we focus on teachers. The teachers whom we interviewed for this segment of our research are located in a complex position. On the one hand, they are responsible for the rights of their pupils. Even in the absence of CCTVs, teachers are responsible for a fair management of their school’s disciplinary procedures, which may become more complex when footage is used (Perry-Hazan & Birnhack 2018), as well as for educating their pupils in human rights (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989, Article 29(b)). On the other hand, the interviewed teachers also occupy a disempowered position within the school, as well as within the social structures surrounding it. Decentralization reforms vested much decision-making power with school principals. However, contrary to the policymakers’ intentions, the reforms reduced teacher involvement in decision-making and also expanded the time and efforts principals devote to monitoring teachers (Addi-Raccah 2009, pp. 165-166). In addition, many teachers are themselves under constant surveillance (Perry-Hazan & Birnhack 2019). These practices correspond to the low status of the teaching profession in Israel. An international study on teachers’ social status in 21 countries found that Israeli teachers are ranked next to last (Dolton, Marcenaro, Vries, & She 2018).

The study is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 55 teachers who teach at 55 Israeli schools that have installed CCTV systems. After obtaining IRB ethics approval, we recruited teachers through personal contacts (our own and those of our research assistants) and through ads in social media and universities. The rejection rate was low, as almost all teachers we approached agreed to participate in the research. The interviews were conducted between July 2016 and May 2017. The teachers determined the interview venues according to their own convenience. Fifty-four interviews were conducted in person, and one interview was conducted via Skype. We used a heterogeneous purposive sampling. The sampling guaranteed diversity in teacher demographics (age, education, seniority), in the school sector (elementary/secondary, secular/religious, Jewish/Arab/Druze), in the geographical spread, and in the socioeconomic status of the municipalities. The sample includes more women than men (39 women and 16 men), reflecting the gender distribution characterizing the teaching profession in Israel. The teachers were requested to describe the location of cameras in their school, their usages, the regulation of the access to the footage, and the teachers’ involvement in decision-making processes. The teachers were asked for their personal opinions regarding cameras in different locations in the school. We specifically asked the teachers whether the cameras derogate pupils’ rights in general, and pupils’ privacy in particular, and/or make pupils feel that their privacy is derogated. In addition, we asked the teachers whether they considered a school to be a public or a private space. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. We designed a coding tree that incorporated teachers’ knowledge concerning the CCTVs and their involvement in the decision-making processes, teachers’ perspectives on pupil privacy in classrooms, and teachers’ perspectives on pupil privacy in hallways and schoolyards. We used Dedoose software to categorize this coding tree and shaped subcategories during the second stage of analysis.

The findings indicated that in the vast majority of the schools, teachers were not part of decision-making processes. While teachers are responsible for the daily management of school discipline, they were not consulted, or even notified, about the installation and routine usages of the CCTVs. The findings also showed that while almost all teachers thought that classroom surveillance violates pupil privacy, half of them dismissed pupil privacy as a relevant consideration when they discussed surveillance in hallways and schoolyards. These teachers argued that the school is a non-democratic space, that children are not concerned about privacy, and that there is an overriding need to focus on discipline. Some of these teachers were even surprised at the question of whether the cameras derogate pupil privacy. CCVT systems do not record sound, and therefore class discussions are not a reason to make such a prominent distinction between classroom and other school spaces with regard to the impact of surveillance on pupil privacy. Moreover, social interactions between pupils may be more intimate during recess than during lessons. Yet, the teachers were more willing to recognize the interconnections between privacy and intimacy in the context of classroom surveillance during lessons, where they were part of the intimacy and their own privacy was affected as well. In a previous study in which we examined the decision-making of school principals who installed CCTVs, we found that privacy was a recurrent issue in the interviews, and all the principals understood that the decision to install CCTVs has implications on both pupil and teacher privacy (Perry-Hazan & Birnhack 2016). In light of the above, the current study raises questions concerning social and institutional reasons that lead teachers to marginalize pupil privacy and ways to raise teachers’ awareness of pupils’ rights and promote their willingness to protect these rights.

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