Cameras On: How Schools Reify Unequal Relationships Through Decisions About Online Visibility

Although students increasingly attend school online, virtual classroom interactions are understudied. This article addresses how decisions about online visibility—when and in what way teachers and students see each other—shape relationships. Our multi-case ethnography includes observations and interviews from virtual and hybrid schools prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and from two high schools that moved online in 2020. We argue that visibility varies across three dimensions (form, autonomy and purpose) and identify dominant configurations: mandatory bodily visibility and mandatory data visibility, both employed for surveillance, and teacher-innovated negotiated visibility, utilized for connection. While requiring cameras-on at all times alienates students and degrades relationships, having their engagement measured only by automatically-collected data can isolate students as well. Subverting top-down practices, teacher-innovators forged connections by working out with students how and when they would be visible. Race and class shaped how students experienced the configurations their schools and teachers chose to enforce.