The aim of this dissertation is to study how positioning among students in the music classroom interplays with music teaching activities as practised in Swedish comprehensive schools. The study uses a videoethnographic technique for documenting interactions between students in two different music classrooms. The one is in a music profile school with students for whom music may be assumed to be important, the other is in a standard curriculum school with students who do not have any special relation to music. However, both schools recruit students who come from educated, economically stable homes in white middle class society in Sweden and thus share a similar background. The students’ interactions are transcribed in great detail and analysed using concepts from positioning theory, conversation analysis and discursive psychology.

The results show great differences between the two music classrooms. In the Ordinary School, the dominant positions are conformity, humour, insecurity and rationality. In the Music Profile School the dominant positions are rebelliousness, seriousness, confidence and emotionality. In terms of gender, the Music Profile School classroom could be described as a predominantly masculine practice which diminishes the opportunity for students who wish to attain the position musician and at the same time express femininity.

These differences in the students’ positioning affects the possibility for such music educational practices as peer-learning to take place. Differences in positioning also affect what work needs to be done in terms of classroom management.

By focusing on how positions are achieved through interaction, rather than on what the positions consist of, I hope to open possibilities for the individual music teacher to become aware of which students are being favoured in his or her own classroom. I also hope that this research will help to promote change that could result in greater social justice in the music classroom. How this is to be done will, however, need to be the subject of future research.