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ClassDojo is a popular educational technology platform used by teachers to manage students’ behaviour and communicate with parents. This platform, though, along with other similar digital classroom management tools, are subject to ongoing debate. This paper critically discusses the use of ClassDojo from different contexts across 3 studies that engaged in multiple data sources, including publicly available online discussion forums, polices and websites (study 1), interviews with teachers and families (study 1 and 2), classroom observations (study 2), and a parent/educator online survey (study 3). Drawing on Foucault's concept of pastoral power and data collected from these different contexts, we show that an app such as ClassDojo may be understood as a key instrument of a technologised pastorate within educational settings that provides a datafied form of behaviour judgement that is context free and technology reliant. We question the boundaries of educational technology, revealing the possible downfalls associated with such technology use in schools, and recommend that education stakeholders critically assess the effectiveness and suitability of digital tools.
Corser et al. (Mon,) studied this question.