At its inception, ClassDojo was a tool that digitised and datafied student behaviour and the process by which teachers sought to condition that behaviour. Its primary function was to provide teachers with a way in which to track student behaviours and provide immediate feedback to students about behaviour. Its functionalities introduced new data-driven possibilities for teachers, equipping them with a tool that automatically generates individual student and whole-class behavioural data records, and an ability to respond in real time, on the move and from any location to student behaviour. Theoretically, ClassDojo draws on a logic of behaviourism to influence student behaviour. Students are reinforced with positive, negative and neutral ‘Dojo points’ as a means to encourage and discourage particular behaviours (Goldstein 2013).

The surveillance mechanisms embedded within ClassDojo are not confined to classroom observations but extend beyond the walls of the classroom. ClassDojo provides teachers with further new possibilities for practice in the domain of teacher–parent engagement. Through its digitised communication network ClassDojo provides teachers with the ability to deliver a child’s behaviour data directly to parents, in real time, along with continual access to constantly updated behaviour profiles in the form of student reports. Registered parents are reminded every Friday via email to check their child’s student report, a strategy deployed as a means to foster parental engagement. This feature effectively subjects students to a weekly report card of their behaviour delivered directly to a parents’ inbox. This datafication of student discipline through surveillance and the digitised communication network servicing the school community combine to transform ClassDojo from a mechanism through which surveillance is datafied, into a dataveillance mechanism.