Time:
29 June 2012
2 pm – 4 pm
Place:
Copenhagen Business
School
Porcelænshaven 26
2000 Frederiksberg
Room: PH407
Promises
of Reflexivity
Managing
and Researching Inclusive Schools
In order to obtain the PhD degree Helene Ratner
has submitted her PhD thesis.
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.
The defence will be followed by a reception in
Porcelænshaven.
