Pupils' informal social strategies in a Swedish compulsory school - What pupils do and say, out of sight of the teachers, while managing written individual assignments

This ethnographic study in education, based on observations, audio-visual recordings and interviews, explored pupils' supportive interactions in a year eight class at a Swedish school. Goffman's dramaturgical theory of the presentation of self was used as a theoretical framework with a focus on the pupils' interactions with their classmates in backstage spaces when they prepare performances in the form of writing assignments to be handed in to teachers. Some pupils took responsibility for having an assignment to hand in to teachers, but not for their learning process in planning their work and writing the assignment themselves, in line with the formal requirements of a goal-oriented school system. The findings showed that pupils applied informal social strategies when managing formal individual assignments. Some examples of these strategies were: swapping computers with classmates during lessons and writing for peers, logging in to peers' Google Classroom accounts and writing for them, and forwarding pictures of completed written assignments to peers to be reformulated in their peers' "own words". The intention of these interactions was to portray a favourable impression of themselves and their abilities to the assessing teachers. The pupils' strategies tended to reinforce classic socially reproductive patterns and generate inequalities between pupils; pupils with higher levels of social and economic capital seemed to profit more and achieve better grades than others. These informal networking strategies co-existed with, and were in opposition to, the formal school context, and were difficult for teachers to detect due to their taking place backstage, out of teachers' sight.