An exploration of students', parents', and teachers' experiences with behaviour-tracking apps in secondary schools.

My research will focus on the app 'ClassCharts'. This software enables the monitoring and tracking of individual student behaviour, where teachers can award positive and negative points through customisable categories such as 'ambition' or 'lack of focus'. Points are displayed on a pie chart, for example, displaying 40% positive and 60% negative. Data is available in real-time for staff, students, and parents to view. The app can also hold data on attendance, set homework and detentions, and display timetables.
Despite ClassCharts' vast uptake in UK schools since its launch in 2013, with a user base of over 350,000 teachers (Hayes, 2016), there is scarce empirical evidence on how students, parents, and staff experience and understand these technologies. There is a significant gap in research surrounding behaviour-tracking apps, as DiGiacomo et al. (2022) explain, following their research on how students and principals perceive the app ClassDojo in the US. While their study provides emerging insights, they emphasise that "there is a grave need for more empirically grounded research...this work should centre the voices, experiences, and perspectives of children" (DiGiacomo et al., 2022: p.183).
My research will contribute emerging, much-needed knowledge that is currently incomplete, critically exploring the potential of this technology to transform education, ensuring all stakeholders have a voice in how these technologies are used, to understand how they experience any changes these apps introduce.
Current literature shows that concerns are genuine. However, this must be thoroughly studied and further understood, examining impacts, particularly on disadvantaged students, as data surveillance exacerbates educational inequalities (Lu et al., 2021). There exists a dearth of empirical research exploring the effects of behaviour-tracking apps, with existing literature overwhelmingly theoretical.
Further, students have recently lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, with suggestions of long-term impacts from loss of education (Eyles et al., 2020), are experiencing a drastic drop in living standards (JRF, 2023), and spending in schools is falling (UNISON, 2023). It is, therefore, a particularly poignant time to examine these technological practices. Additionally, surveillance and the data collection of human behaviour are increasingly pervasive. For children especially, there remains little evidence that specific strategies to safeguard children's rights in response to dataveillance have been developed or applied (Lupton and Williamson, 2017). It is crucial then to examine how this behaviour-tracking technology manifests inside and outside the classroom.
esearch Questions

How do students, parents, and teachers understand, experience, and navigate the data surveillance of classroom behaviour, and in what ways (if at all) do class, racialised and minoritised identities and (dis)ability shape their experiences?
How does ClassCharts mediate relationships between students, teachers, and parents?
In what ways (if at all) does ClassCharts shape students' learning and educational experiences?
Methodology
My approach with students will be ethnographic and participatory, taking place over an academic year, embedding myself in the school's environment and culture by participating and observing from within to explore students' lived experiences (Emond, 2005).
I will employ participant observations and take field notes. My time will be divided between two classes in year groups 7 and 11, following pupils in lessons 1 day per week. These year groups offer stark comparisons to examine the differences in experiences between the two critical moments in the educational timeline.
Once rapport is established, I will select approximately six volunteers from each class representing the school in terms of race, gender, class, and ability. I will conduct a 1-hour focus group with each set to build rapport.