Post-panoptic accountability: making data visible through ‘data walls’ for schooling improvement

Abstract

Post-panopticism is aligned with the Foucauldian conception of power and illustrates its apparatuses and mechanisms, for instance the visibility of bodies under the gaze, the facility to mobilise power relations for political purposes, and the capacity to engage self -technologies where there is self-surveillance and surveillance of others. As a concept, it is a confluence of the disciplinary power of panoptic control and the ubiquitous security mechanism of biopower in action. Post-panopticism in the discipline provides a means to identify areas of lack in teacher and student populations. Post-panoptic surveillance in Australian schools is illustrated in this article around the use of data wall displays. Data walls are a collective mechanism that produces biopower through its alignment with panoptic disciplinary power in schools. These data assemblages are an example of a suite of technologies that profile student performance, mould teaching practices, and shape subjectivities of leaders, teachers, and students.