Practicing in the Panopticon: Teaching and Learning in the Surveillance Media Culture

• In Event: Effective or Wise? Teaching and Assessing Professional Dispositions in Education

Abstract

1. objectives/purposes
This paper explores intersections among popular media culture, professional dispositions, and the field of education by investigating how selected reality television programs portray the notion of professionalism, and how these portrayals relate to the experiences of teaching and learning.
The following research questions grounded our study: How is the concept of professionalism in the workplace represented in contemporary reality television? How do representations of professionalism, particularly with respect to leadership, learning, and culture, relate to the identity development of educators?

2. perspective/theoretical framework;
Using critical media literacy to focus the method of textual analysis enables a deeper understanding of how visual texts reinforce particular perceptions about teaching, professional dispositions and power relationships. In the face of persistent neoliberal policies and practices, critical media analysis should be a part of the P-12 curriculum at all levels, and especially among teacher candidates, to lay the groundwork for sustained critical analysis of visual texts and other artifacts in order to promote democratic political engagement among a citizenry. Further, this ability should be considered a part of educators’ professional dispositions as “media literacy is more effectively conceptualized as a lifelong ‘thinking disposition’ that facilitates critical consumption and inquiry of all media forms in all consumption contexts” (Bellino, 2011, p. 102). If we help our teacher candidates develop this skill, then they can use it to question (and possibly disrupt) cultural artifacts in their own lives and help their P-12 students develop this ability, potentially leading to more widespread, critical movement in society.


3. methods

The method of textual analysis is used to make explicit the social, political and economic contexts in which the television episodes and documentary were produced, while also highlighting the messages about teachers, students and educational sites embedded in each of the media artifacts (Bulman, 2005; Kellner, 1995). In the textual analyses, we situated the episodes and documentary in the social contexts in which they were produced by providing glimpses of the specific social, political and economic landscapes surrounding each production. In relation to the television episodes, this analytical process helps to disrupt hyper-real (Baudrillard, 1983) representations of teachers and teaching in favor of a more critical perspective. Contextualizing these episodes and the documentary is important in that we are better able to explore why these cultural artifacts were created in particular moments for particular purposes.

4. data sources;
To address the concepts of education, professional dispositions, and media representations of these as expressed in our research question, we considered three programs: Frontline: The Education of Michelle Rhee, Teach Tony Danza, and Undercover Boss. Frontline provided a glimpse of leadership in K-12 schooling; Teach Tony Danza offered an on-the-ground depiction of an urban high school teaching experience; and Undercover Boss suggested a perspective on professionalism that reached beyond the field of education.

5. results.
Textual analysis of these programs revealed three themes: the cult of personality, the ubiquity and influence of surveillance, and the persistence of the myth of meritocracy (represented as the American Dream).

Authors

• Julie Gorlewski, SUNY - College at New Paltz

• David Andrew Gorlewski, SUNY - College at New Paltz

• Catherine Lara Lalonde, D'Youville College