Titel: Fostran som pedagogiskt projekt. Bilden av ?problembarnet? i statens offentliga utredningar. (The bringing up of pupils as an educational project. The image of ?the problem child? in governmental committees).   This study focuses on the image of the problem child as it appears in two texts (from the 1940s and 1970s) of governmental committees on Public Health (SOU) and the new school law (Ds 2009:25, will be implemented in July 2011).

My own experiences as an upper secondary school teacher and the increase in research on masculinity in educational settings that occurred during the late 1990 emphasizing on the gender gap in achievement and grades is the point of departure for this thesis. The aim is to investigate how boys in upper secondary school are constituted and constitute themselves as motivated and achieving learning subjects. Another aim is to see what possibilities there are to form different teaching practices to create other possible positions for me and the pupils. The research questions are 1) How does boys´ construction of masculinity constitute how they see their own ability to be motivated and achieve in school 2) What significance do my shifting approaches and expectations on the pupils as well as teaching have on the boys constitution as learning subjects? To answer these questions I use a theoretical framework of feminist poststructuralist.