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Social differences and classroom culture in the upper secondary education

The subject of this paper is to explore the role of the classroom culture and the social background of the pupils in relation to in- and exclusion and learning opportunities in the Danish upper secondary education.

The paper is based on empirical studies of the teaching, the social positions and positioning in the classroom, and the processes of in- and exclusion in the Danish upper secondary education. The empirical studies consists observations and interviews during the pupils’ first month in the Danish upper secondary education. The purpose of the project is to determine how the upper secondary education can support, acknowledge and include pupils from non-academic backgrounds.

The project will highlight the importance of the social context in the education, the pupils’ different opportunities of learning and participating within the social context of the classroom, and will consider the pupils difficulties as social challenges in the education and not (only) as individual challenges. In this paper I will focus on how to understand the classroom-culture in the upper secondary education as a social context, which produces different pupil-identities. The pupils’ different positions in the classroom are closely connected to the classroom-culture and to the teaching: What is the definition of a good pupil (a good body), what are the pupils’ opportu­ni­ties of participation in different settings, and how does this affect the pupils’ relation to each other, the teacher and the school. But the pupils’ different positions are also related to the pupils’ social background, gender and ethnicity and to educational discourses in and outside the school. My main question for this paper is: How does the classroom produce different pupil-identities and how is this related to the pupils’ social differences regarding social background and gender? Learning cultures and opportunities of participation within the classroom are very central for my analyses.

The theoretical foundation of the project is inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s educa­tional sociology and theories focusing on the social differences within the school culture as an important frame for the pupils positions, positionings and strategies within the institutional setting called a classroom.
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Keywords: Upper secondary education, social differences, classroom culture, positioning, participation, in- and exclusion, social relations, social background.