PhD defence: Helene Ratner

 In order to obtain the PhD degree Helene Ratner has submitted her PhD thesis.

Promises of Reflexivity- Managing and Researching Inclusive Schools

This thesis examines “reflexivity” as the key theme for understanding how Danish school managers work with the currently influential political vision of including students with special needs in the common school. Pedagogical scholars and recent policy initiatives posit that schools can achieve the much-wanted cultural change towards inclusion if teachers reflect on their mindsets and practices. Existing knowledge practices are depicted as too “durable” with the unintended side-effects of segregation and budget overruns, and school managers are expected to make teachers change their practices through (self-) reflexivity.

This thesis draws on theoretical concepts developed in social anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, and actor-network theory to analyze how the social constructivist notion of reflexivity informs school management practices, both in terms of the hopes it gives rise to, the complications and accountability relations it brings about, and its politics of potentiality and deferral of complexity to future settlements.

Supervisors:

Associate Professor Christian Borch, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy

Associate Professor Casper Bruun Jensen, IT University of Copenhagen

Professor Steve Woolgar, Saïd Business School

Assessment Committee:

Associate Professor Peter Kjær (Chair), Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School

Professor Steve Brown, University of Leicester

Professor Dorthe Staunæs, Aarhus University

Everyone is welcome to attend the defence, which will take place in English.

Reception

The defence will be followed by a reception in Porcelænshaven.

The thesis is available now: http://openarchive.cbs.dk/handle/10398/8459.