Excluded from School: Between Discipline & Marginalization

Categorizing, sorting, and distribution of individuals in school can probably not be avoided as it is a fundamental premise for discipline, but becomes problematic when it results in discrimination and marginalization of certain pupils. In a Danish context, the extent of indirect or institutional discrimination has not been investigated, but it has been shown that the awareness hereof among professionals is limited. International studies show that discrimination plays a significant role in the practice of disciplinary exclusions in other countries, however, it remains unexplored whether disciplinary exclusions also contribute to discrimination in Danish schools and how connections between discipline and discrimination arise.
Studies within the field typically focus on risk factors for and consequences of disciplinary exclusions, but weaknesses can be identified in their approaches. Several studies see the disciplinary exclusion as a mere reaction to a single event of an individual’s (bad) behavior. Thereby, a deficit-oriented and functionalist approach is supported, where the central question is how to get pupils to “behave”. I met similar reductive views in Denmark as I interviewed excluded pupils for my master’s thesis; one explained to me: “I had a knife with me in school, and then I got thrown out”. Focusing on such linear explanations conceals connections to the social context in which an exclusion takes place and where the “misbehavior” can be seen as meaningful and as a part of an individual’s conduct of life. As a consequence, the connection between discrimination, marginalization and disciplinary exclusions cannot be accounted for by these studies. By investigating marginalization processes in disciplinary practices, the aim of the proposed study is to contribute to the longstanding debate concerning the relation between schooling and the reproduction of social inequalities.