| Summary: | This paper examines how pupils with a non-Swedish background, in a secondary school in Stockholm’s suburban, Sweden, interpret and absorb the contents of school-room classes. It also examines whether the interpretations are influenced by a power-relation between teacher and pupils. The pupil’s interpretations, including their values and perceptions as regards to the content, are central to our study. Firstly, classes on world conflicts and corporal punishment for children were observed and these observations were the foundation to this study. Secondly, pupils with various ethnic backgrounds were interviewed regarding their experiences of the classes. The analysis indicates the presence of a power-relation between teacher and pupils in class caused by the teacher showing no consideration to the pupils’ various backgrounds when selecting the contents of the presentation, resulting in a conscious or unconscious exclusion of the pupils’ backgrounds. The interviews indicate that the teacher’s cultural capital was in a superior position to the pupils’ cultural capital. This may lead to a sense of exclusion. The pupils’ interpretation stem from both their own experience in a multi-cultural school and from their parents’ backgrounds. They are thus expressions of trans-cultural “new ethnicities” rather than one specific ethnicity.
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