A Reconfigured Panopticon: COVID-19, Virtual Schooling, and Regulation of Our Homes.

This article examines how the COVID-19 pandemic reconfigured the panopticon—a concept originally theorized by Michel Foucault to describe institutional surveillance and discipline—within virtual schooling, focusing on the experiences of thirteen mothers of color in greater Los Angeles during spring 2020. It argues that emergency remote instruction extended the institutional gaze into private homes through technologies like webcams and learning management systems, blurring public and private boundaries and imposing neoliberal, capitalistic values that disproportionately surveilled and regulated marginalized families. The study highlights how these virtual panoptic forces redefined home spaces, rearticulated parental roles as both caregivers and quasi-educators under institutional scrutiny, and reconstituted value systems that misdistributed shame, reinforcing educational inequities. The authors call for critical educational research to interrogate and dismantle these evolving surveillance practices to realize schools' liberatory potential.