John Krejsler

Professions and Their Identities: How to Explore Professional Development among (Semi-)Professions.

This article explores conditions for discussing what it means to be professional among teachers, pre‐school teachers, nurses, and social workers. From an epistemological point of view it explores how analytical strategies can frame in sufficiently complex ways what it means to be a professional today. It is assumed that at least four main issues must be dealt with in order to conduct a satisfactory analysis of professions and their identities. Firstly, it is of fundamental strategic importance that one makes explicit the epistemological point of departure from which ones analyses frame and describe the surrounding world. Secondly, one must qualify ones stance in relation to the sociology of professions. Thirdly, one must reflect a discourse on professions in the light of the extensive processes of individualisation in society. And, lastly, one must reflect a discourse on professions in light of the new administrative practices within the public sector.

Successful School Principalship in Danish Schools.

Purpose – Aims at conceptualizing and investigating the meaning of good school principalship within the space for manoeuvring that is available within the context of Danish comprehensive schools. The paper aims to present findings from case studies of two Danish schools within the frame of reference.Design/methodology/approach – Outlines the educational context for the Danish schools and gives a short account of the point of departure for the analysis. The perspective in this study is that leadership is about communication, decision making and community building at several levels in schools. In the beginning of the project a series of interviews with stakeholders in those schools was conducted. That formed the basis for the accounts of the first two schools. Later on a number of key stakeholders in the schools were observed and interviewed and that is the basis for the account of the third Danish school.Findings – The findings show that whilst there is a high degree of consensus amongst the schools and th...

Discursive strategies that individualize: CVs and appraisal interviews

Professionals in education must increasingly speak of themselves through an individualizing discourse that commits them to a lifelong and life‐encompassing learning and working project. By means of techniques like CVs and appraisal interviews, post‐signifying regimes conjure up discursive spaces that thrive on the language of commitment, love and enthusiasm. This urges professionals to speak of their role and personality in accordance with the vision of their organization. Such discursive technology may encourage commitment, be turned into manipulative power instruments, or be reduced to shallow rituals. Beyond doubt, however, post‐signifying strategies raise the stakes in organizational communication. The purpose of this article is epistemological, i.e. it intends to explore positions and strategies made available through the language provided by a certain discursive technology. It does not claim to say how this technology is actually employed empirically in particular contexts. The article draws on ideas and concepts from Deleuze & Guattari and Foucault.

Becoming individual in education and cyberspace

This article traces key competences that are necessary to master as teachers are increasingly obliged to orchestrate learning as initiation into individual autonomy. The context is one that acknowledges that learning increasingly dissipates out into cyberspace.Inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, the article explores preconditions for professionalizing the teacher using project work as a generalized case. Project work claims to anticipate initiation into autonomy and reflects new power relations between professionals and clients as well. It is assumed that project work illustrates the transition from traditional school forms to a more individualized society where Information and Communication Technologies media (ICT) are increasingly integrated in learning. It is likewise assumed that the procedures and rules governing project work—as a way of shaping the image of oneself as an individual—correspond in ambivalent ways to competences that one must master in order to navigate as an up‐to‐date employee, citizen, and parent, and so on.This article traces key competences that are necessary to master as teachers are increasingly obliged to orchestrate learning as initiation into individual autonomy. The context is one that acknowledges that learning increasingly dissipates out into cyberspace.Inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, the article explores preconditions for professionalizing the teacher using project work as a generalized case. Project work claims to anticipate initiation into autonomy and reflects new power relations between professionals and clients as well. It is assumed that project work illustrates the transition from traditional school forms to a more individualized society where Information and Communication Technologies media (ICT) are increasingly integrated in learning. It is likewise assumed that the procedures and rules governing project work—as a way of shaping the image of oneself as an individual—correspond in ambivalent ways to competences that one must master in order to navigate as an up‐to‐date emp...

Desire and (self-)management in education. Post-lenses on Nordic intakes of transnational tendencies

Education, learning bodies, and organizations are undergoing significant transformation. More and more institutional contexts, including virtual ones are being drawn into the orbit of comprehensive educational strategies in order to make nations fit for an imagined future that is often termed Knowledge Societies or Knowledge Economies (e.g. Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Humans are being expected to ‘stretch’ themselves to the limit of their own capabilities. Therefore, human subjects are under increased demand to learn all the time and everywhere. This has put concepts like Life Long Learning and Life Wide Learning on the agenda in the Nordic countries, the EU, and beyond. In order to make successful learning happen, two entangled phenomena are obvious: learning must be self-managed, and the processes of self-management are often facilitated in affective ways. Thereby, the management of selves and the intensity and quality of desire and other affective and cognitive dimensions of institutional life have become both the target and the instrument when human capacities as ‘the potentials of the future’ are cultivated and governed (e.g. Popkewitz, Olsson, Petersson, & Kowalczyk, 2006; Staunæs, 2011). This special issue explores what (self-)management in education may mean – understood as productions of desire and engagement in Nordic education and as answers to policies on various hot issues like inclusion, gender equality, truancy, technologies for disciplining students, and university reform among others. The authors have asked their empirical material questions such as: