There is a strong attachment to ‘the panopticon’ in surveillance studies and it often serves as a key theoretical frame. The panopticon is the ideal prison design, in which the prisoners are unsure of when they are being watched but are aware of the potential of being watched so come to assume that they are indeed being watched. Those in confinement subject themselves to self-discipline based on the assumption that the unseen inspector is watching. The metaphor of the panopticon has relevance far beyond penal institutions however in that it can be used to convey the monitoring of those in, for example, hospitals, factories, and schools.

The uncertainty of the panopticon produces self-regulating and obedient entities, and it has become a popular metaphor for scholars to use in education to convey the intense monitoring teachers face, and particularly in low-trust and high-stakes contexts of neoliberal education. In such environments, it is argued, the fear and potential threat of being observed means that teachers begin to perform as if they are always being observed even when there is no observer present. The panopticon, however, has not been without critique and criticism at a wider level and in education in recent years some scholars have started referring to the emergence of post-panopticism in relation to inspections and surveillance.

Looking at surveillance in England’s quasi-autonomous academy schools, this qualitative research shows how teachers in these schools are facing three different but overlapping forms of surveillance. It demonstrates that teachers in contemporary schools in neoliberal contexts are aware of the different stakeholder groups watching them, the tools and techniques used, and that this surveillance takes place at all times. Significantly, we also see that some teachers are willing participants in their own surveillance. With the element of opacity removed from the surveillance process as teachers in these schools are being constantly monitored in a variety of overt ways, the panopticon has become outmoded as stealth and surprise are no longer required on the part of the watchers. 

The findings presented in this paper stem from a secondary analysis of interview data. The primary study has been reported elsewhere (see Skerritt 2019) and was based on single individual semi-structured interviews with five teachers with experience in England’s quasi-autonomous academy schools. The original research investigated teachers’ views on school autonomy but it became apparent that there was scope for further analysis of the dataset as the participants’ tales often contained references to come under surveillance. In performing the analysis, interview transcripts were continuously reviewed to determine what kind of question(s) could be answered as part of the secondary analysis. One key question was identified: what types of surveillance are teachers experiencing in academies?

This paper concludes that the oft-cited panopticon is no longer an appropriate metaphor for scholars to use in the literature to convey the intense monitoring teachers face and that the post-panoptic era is now upon us.

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