The aim of the inquiry is to describe and perceive pupils’ and teachers’ views on pupils’ responsibility for their schoolwork and how this relate to a more comprehensive ideology of school and today’s high modern society. The analysis is inspired by Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory and the concepts of discursive consciousness, practical consciousness, rules, routines and resources.

To capture pupils’ and teachers’ practical and discursive consciousness of what is meant by pupils´ responsibility observations have been made during lessons in school year 9. The lessons, “study times”, have been introduced with the aim of offering freedom of choice and flexibility. Pupils’ and teachers’ have been interviewed in view of the work during these lessons. The ideology expressed in pupils’ and teachers’ views on pupils’ responsibility is compared to the official school ideology expressed in the curriculum. It is also reflected in relation to Giddens’ and Becks´ description of the high modern society and the concepts of individualism and value-relativism.

The result shows that the meaning of pupils´ responsibility is taken for granted and implies doing the school tasks that the teachers have given and to complete them in time. There is no sign of value-relativism in pupils´ and teachers´ discursive consciousness but there is a discrepancy between the responsibility expressed in pupils’ discursive and practical consciousness. The teachers´ reaction to pupils’ insufficient responsibility is to set up rules and create routines to control the freedom of space offered during the “study times”. The pupils’ legitimate the teachers’ controlling function but in practice they offer resistance against the demand for responsibility. A responsible pupil means a pupil who independently responds to the rules set up around the work. A number of more or less obvious ideological currents appear. Responsibility - learning: There is no connection between responsibility for schoolwork and learning. Responsibility becomes a part of a “culture of doing” where pupils’ don’t feel they get knowledge in exchange when they do their tasks. The freedom pupils’ are offered during the “study times” is used by both pupils, and teachers, to build good relationships. Relationships are not created through work but despite it. Responsibility - individualism: The demand for pupil responsibility is related to individual work. When learning is seen as an individual project responsibility is also seen as something individual. Pupils’ learn that responsibility for schoolwork means being left to yourself and your own needs. The individual choices points to being infinite if only the pupil is prepared to take the consequences for them. The freedom is regarded as making it possible to choose not to work. In a school context this will, in reality, be a choice that will have consequences for the evaluation of the pupils’ achievements which makes it a “none-choice”. Responsibility as a democratic principle: The direct connection between responsibility and pupil participation that is expressed in the curriculum is not to be found in pupils’ and teachers’ “ideology of responsibility”. The teachers offer the pupils participation in relation to which assignments to choose to work with during the “study times”. They are not invited to shape the rules and the routines for the schoolwork or to have influence on the contents of the work or the working environment. The pupils’ don’t ask for more participation though it is the lack of participation that is one of the most important causes of pupils’ taking responsibility for their schoolwork. The pupils’ picture of participation as something chaotic and the teacher’s problems to create more standardized pupil participation weaken the picture of responsibility as one of the democratic principles.