Students’ learning in the classroom takes place in relation to subject matter and the teacher. Another influence, although less evident, are classmates and their opinions about the teacher and the subject, which we may understand as student culture. Choosing this perspective the following research question was proposed:

How do cohesion and tensions in the student culture affect the students’ participation in learning processes in arenas of learning at school?

From this point of departure the study investigates students’ interaction (Bakhtin 1934, Linell 2009, Rommetveit 2004) mediated in time and space (Vygotsky 1930, 1934, Wertsch 1991, 1998) as student culture (Geertz 1973, Gullestad 1989). The student culture comes into being by children positioned as students negotiating contributions from school culture, peer culture and home culture. Academic learning-and-teaching as the core activities of everyday life in classrooms becomes constructed in social processes with communicative and social learning interwoven (Frønes 1994, Mercer 1995, Wells 1999, Woods 1983). And because student culture make some kinds of participating in learning processes probable and others improbable, it is interesting to investigate relations between learning and student culture. As part of understanding classroom activity this can be seen as an argument for expanding the perspectives of didactics with a cultural perspective, where the concept of student culture is a possible contribution. Teachers need conceptual tools that are helpful to get a grip on actions within their reach that can modify and influence the students’ development of the student culture in line with the project of schooling.

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