Student Agency and Punishment Logics in Imagined Future Classroom Technologies

Research Background and Issues

• Challenges and Issues: With the increasing prevalence of digital technologies in classrooms, they are being used both as tools for monitoring and behavior control and are criticized for their potential negative impact on students' emotional and academic well-being. Particularly in the United States, various digital tools (such as classroom management systems and facial recognition technologies) are employed for behavior management and surveillance, raising concerns about privacy, power imbalances, and unfair treatment of marginalized student groups. However, existing research primarily focuses on the perspectives of designers or teachers, with limited exploration of how students perceive these technologies and their roles in future classrooms. There is a lack of detailed investigation into students' agency and viewpoints.
• Significance: For students, schools are not only places of learning but also intersections of social discipline and power dynamics. Understanding students' expectations of how future technologies can support or hinder classroom safety and discipline can guide the design of more equitable and student-centered technologies and policies.
• Research Motivation: Through participatory design workshops and ethnographic studies, the authors aim to explore how students envision future classroom technologies and how these technologies reflect their perspectives on safety and behavior management, addressing the current gap in literature regarding students' viewpoints.

Proposed Solution

• Proposed Solution: The authors conducted participatory design workshops, inviting students to design future school technologies to address the issues they identified, while integrating ethnographic research to interpret these perspectives within a broader social context.
• Innovative Aspects:
  • Focus on students' agency, rather than merely viewing them as passive recipients or resistors of discipline.
  • Use of low-fidelity prototyping tools (such as LEGO or paper-based construction) to help students concretely express their expectations for future technologies.
  • Exploration not only of students' critical opinions on technology but also of their internalization and reconstruction of mainstream disciplinary logic.
• Implementation Steps:
  1. Data Collection: Conduct ethnographic research and establish connections with students and relevant stakeholders to gather in-depth information about students' daily experiences and technology use.
  2. Participatory Design Workshops: Facilitate future-oriented workshops in phases to allow students to share issues, envision solutions, and design technologies:
     • Step 1: Critique current experiences.
     • Step 2: Imagine ideal and dystopian futures.
     • Step 3: Propose actionable paths based on envisioned futures.
  3. Data Analysis: Use open and focused coding methods to extract themes, supplemented by field notes and observational data for comprehensive analysis.

Research Findings

• Specific Findings:
  • Students proposed various designs for future classroom technologies, such as "robotic security systems" and "automated punishment systems," reflecting their observations on fairness, disciplinary objectivity, and power dynamics within schools.
  • Many students, despite expressing dissatisfaction with the current disciplinary system's inequities, had internalized the logic of punishment and surveillance. Their designs often sought to optimize these systems through technology rather than completely overturn them.
  • Students also voiced a need for "anti-disciplinary" measures targeting teacher behavior, with some designs revealing attempts to challenge existing power structures.
• Comparison with Existing Solutions and Advantages:
  • Unlike purely technology-driven control or surveillance systems, students' designs incorporated expectations for fairness, safety, and autonomy. Compared to teacher-oriented management tools (e.g., ClassDojo), these designs emphasized the "objectivity" of technology.
  • Highlighted the importance of recognizing students as creative and critical agents, offering new perspectives for educational technology development.
• Experimental Results and Limitations:
  • The study revealed that students' expectations for technology challenge current school surveillance systems while reflecting compromises with existing institutional frameworks. However, the assumed advantages of "technological objectivity" carry risks of misuse, such as unethical outcomes from tech-driven punishment systems.
  • Limitations include the sample being primarily drawn from a small group of students in hybrid education settings, leaving questions about whether similar views exist among students in traditional schools.
• Future Directions:
  • Explore designs that promote "restorative justice" rather than solely "deterrent discipline."
  • Extend research to other educational environments to understand diverse student perspectives on technology.
  • Deepen co-creation with students while encouraging them to consider more forward-thinking, non-punitive solutions.

Through this study, the authors have advanced our understanding of students' roles in conceptualizing educational technologies, advocating for greater emphasis on student voices and agency in technology design for education while remaining cautious of ethical and societal issues stemming from excessive technologization.