Different modes of self-regulated work are becoming more and more common in Swedish schools as well as internationally. This can be seen as in line with a development in the society at large towards more individualization and increased individualized risk taking. The increase of self-regulated work takes place in a context where students have to balance and evaluate a variety of resources which makes their choices both more difficult and potentially more risky.

In this study students in two programs in a Swedish secondary school have been video recorded. The course they are working with was established with the explicit purpose of developing SRL and independence. Critical use and evaluation of material are considered to be among the fundamental skills that are to be developed.

In instructions handed out to students different standards on how to use information and make references are explicitly highlighted and self-regulated work are spoken of as preparation for upcoming academic work.

The overall research aim is directed toward how students relate to the demand for a critical approach? What different motivations are possible to deduce from their interaction? This paper focuses on the contradiction between students’ attempts to be independent in an assessed mode of work, having to consider a grade point average perspective and at the same time concentrate on developing skills primarily motivated with reference to an upcoming educational setting. We analyze the filmed interaction using interaction analysis and concepts from frame analysis and socio-cultural risk theory.

How the students’ discuss the choice and evaluation of texts that finally becomes parts of the reference section can be looked upon as important indicators of the critical competence that are ascribed such high value in self-regulated work. By studying the interaction connected with the choice of references we claim that it is possible to make different motifs behind the choices visible. These motivations will then be analyzed from a perspective of how different framing and risk considerations are brought in play and laminated.

Our preliminary findings points in a direction that the students’ lean more towards a grade point average perspective and chooses alternatives much more from calculations of what is beneficiary in the current situation more than relating to a critical, scientific academic discourse.

Keywords: Framing, Risk, Reference, Self-regulated work