Recent research in classrooms has often had its focus on the pupil, the individual, and not on the different groups of students that exist. In a classroom there are normally several different groupings, each one having its own personal attitude towards the current lesson. If there had been more research we would find it easier to understand why pupils sometimes behave the way they do.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze how pupils` social relations create groupings. Furthermore I intend to investigate how and why pupils show their belonging to a certain group.

The two questions of the essay are:

1. How pupils’ social relations appear in a classroom?

2. What strategies do the pupils use to indicate their belonging to a grouping?

My final conclusion is that the pupils’ social relations appear in groupings, in which a certain standard dominates how the pupil should behave during a lesson. The members of a group use the same strategies to show their group belonging. For example, it can be different attitudes to the teacher’s lesson that mark a grouping.