The Panoptic Function of the Examination: Hidden Curriculum, Disciplinary Power, and Control

Abstract

This study discusses the possibility of considering examinations in the modern school not merely as technical instruments for measuring academic achievement, but also as disciplinary mechanisms operating within the hidden curriculum of schooling. Drawing on Foucault’s understanding of disciplinary power, the examination is evaluated as a school practice that renders the student visible, compares, classifies, documents, and directs the student toward self-regulation. The study was designed as a descriptive and interpretive inquiry that re-examines quantitative data from a completed master’s thesis with a specific focus on examinations. The data were obtained from 242 students enrolled in an Anatolian high school in the city center of Uşak during the 2011–2012 academic year. The findings were evaluated through frequency and percentage distributions. The results show that approximately half of the students regularly perceive examinations as instruments of control and surveillance; similarly, approximately half think that examinations have a learning-facilitating function. Although some descriptive differences were observed in relation to gender, these differences were not interpreted as indicating causality or statistical significance. The study argues that the pedagogical and disciplinary functions of examinations cannot be sharply separated from one another; while examinations regulate learning, they also operate as instruments of the hidden curriculum that shape students according to institutional norms.