In this presentation I will, drawing from material from my recently finished doctoral thesis in Music pedagogy, argue that positioning among students’ is not to be regarded as a parallel, but an integrated, part of the learning process in the classroom.

The material comes from a videoethnography, documenting interactions in two different music classrooms in upper secondary school in Sweden. The material is then being transcribed, analysed and thematised using Jonathan Potters question of what is at stake in the interactions among the students. By using the concept of positioning by Rom Harrée and Bronwyn Davies I have identified how every interaction also to some extent does positioning labour in which differences between the students as well as between the students and the teacher is made visible. A position in this sense is thereby not to be understood as a complete identity with a larger set of features, but is rather fragmental in its nature. Finally I have used the concept of rhetorical resources, as it is being used in both Conversation Analysis and the early Discursive Psychology, do try to grasp how the process of positioning actually is occurring.

As I have done the analysis two major risks were detected. The first one is the tendency to regard the two positions available in every formal educational setting, the teacher and the student, as self-evidently meaningful in every interaction. Doing so could reduce important aspect of the interactions in the classroom. The other risk is to enter the analysis by regarding the subject matter as an important aspect in the students’ interactions, which does not seem to be the case. This is especially crucial in my case as the subject matter is music, which a large set of contemporary research on has been described as a central part of identity formations in youth cultures. Giving music primacy in the analysis, by focusing the relations to different instruments or musical genres as an example, would result in leaving important parts of the interactions unanalysed.

To make my case I will present excerpts from my thesis showing how the students position themselves in regard to humour and seriousness as well as confidence and insecurity affects the way they engage in different activities in the music classroom which most probably affect the possible learning outcome.