How is an inclusive agenda possible in an excluding education system? Revisiting the Danish Dilemma

ABSTRACT

The policy of inclusion in the Scandinavian countries is often related to the idea of the welfare state, and specifically to notions of equality, equity and democracy. The image of the welfare state seems to live well, even though structural and social barriers seem to maintain inequality when it comes to access to education. Instead of overcoming the barriers, the politics of inclusion may actually make the gap between ideals and realities more visible. In this article, we analyse the political efforts to create a more inclusive education system in Denmark in relation to these structural barriers. By applying the notions of discourse and dispositive of Foucault, we argue that the policies of educational inclusion encompass rationales and governing techniques directed at the societal and individual levels that may in itself challenge the inclusive agenda. By highlighting some of the political notions of inclusion, we highlight the discrepancies between inclusion as a political project and the structural barriers on the one hand, and inclusion as educational practice on the other. This challenges the previously accepted image of how well the Scandinavian welfare state is doing, especially as it relates to solving the gap between privilege and disadvantage in education.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive education
• inclusion
• Danish education
• dispositive
• optimisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tobias Colling Larsen works in Centre for Family and Handicap in Fredensborg Municipality, Denmark. As an educational consultant, his main task is to assist the local elementary schools in their daily efforts to establish sustainable and inclusive learning environments for all pupils. With a background as an elementary school teacher with a master’s degree in Educational Sociology from the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. He has a special interest in the relationship between society, politics, pedagogical practice and the social conditions among teachers and pupils in the classrooms.

Jessica Holloway is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow within the Research for Educational Impact (REDI) Centre at Deakin University. Her current project, ‘The Role of Teacher Expertise, Authority and Professionalism in Education’, investigates the relationship between schools, professional expertise and democracy, and the role of teachers within these spaces. Her recent publications include ‘Discourse Analysis as Theory, Method, and Epistemology in Studies of Education Policy: A Critical Synthesis of the Literature’ (with Kate Anderson) in the Journal of Education Policy and ‘Teacher Evaluation as an Onto-Epistemic Framework’ in the British Journal of Sociology of Education.

Bjørn Hamre is an associate professor in Education at the Institute of Media, Cognition, and Communication, University of Copenhagen. He is chair of the Danish section of the Nordic Network on Disability Research (nndr.dk). His research focus is inclusion and exclusion in the school system from an educational, sociological and historical perspective.

ORCID

Jessica Holloway http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9267-3197