In European and international politics and educational policy texts, the lifelong learner is promoted, i.e. someone continuously willing and capable to upgrade her/his knowledge and skills necessary for employment. To prepare for becoming an adult citizen, pupils are educated to be entrepreneurs, so as to be an entrepreneur for oneself is included in the democratic function of being involved in the education processes. Within the project, ”Active Citizenship? On Democratic Education in Upper Secondary School”, which aims at exploring democratic education, the relationship between being and becoming is illuminated. How is pedagogy organised to enable students to be democratically involved as responsible actors in their education? What are the students’ expectations of becoming proper democratic citizens and how does that affect their education? The pedagogic structure and understanding of students’ positions in school and society, i.e. to be and become proper citizens, affect their possibilities to influence in school. In this paper, these themes will be discussed in terms of classification, framing, rules and codes with a special focus on class and gender. The research environments, a Social science class and a Vehicle programme class, were chosen as they traditionally attract students with different backgrounds. The method, ethnography, makes it possible to discuss differences between as well as within the two classes. Together with earlier publications in EERJ on ethnographic studies (Borgnakke, 2004) on civic education and youth citizenship (Evans, 2002: Menezes, 2003), this presentation aims to extend understandings of education as lifelong learning in relation to being and becoming a citizen, and, in the case with the vehicle programme, see how vocational education meets the labour market (Lindell & Johansson, 2003).

The data that this discussion draws on was ethnographically produced during one year’s field work in a Vehicle programme class and in a Social science class in an upper secondary school in Western Sweden. The data consists of research data from lessons, interviews with students, teachers and principals as well as local and national policy texts.

First, interpretations of the data will be presented in terms of pedagogic structure and the students’ influences on the “what” (classification) and “how” (framing) in the classroom. This will be discussed in relation to students as young citizens. Since boys and girls are often presented as different, it is important in this research that they, in relation to teachers and peers, i.e. so-called lesson framing, come across as similar. This will be discussed as well as the differences that confirm previous research. The second part of this paper starts with a discussion of citizens as often referred to as lifelong learners and that school are meant to produce active citizens. This discussion will concern the two classes and how their students think of school as useful for their future citizenship in terms of how they see school as a tool for their becoming. In part three, the different parts of being and becoming a lifelong learner will be brought together.