This chapter employs video data together with screen captures for presenting cases where the students try to match questions to search expressions, make decisions about whether they are allowed to visit a certain site, and examine how the students make decisions about relevance and credibility. Information always appears to be unstructured to the students and restructuring of information poses a socio-technical dilemma involving appreciation of an ideological and ethical nature.

Swedish educational policy underlines the importance of independence. In this paper we use socio-cultural theory and Foucault to explain how pupils´ independency is transformed into something else in their work. Our results derive from analyses of filmed sessions and entries in the pupils´ logbooks. Our findings demonstrate that the pupils´ definitions of independence differ from those of the course plan in several aspects: i) the use of certain resources is not considered to show lack of independence, ii) doing things yourself is considered being most independent and iii) to follow instructions, even if this means violating your unique personal thought, is considered a prerequisite for passing/getting good grades and as such a necessary adaption to the school context, sooner than a sign of dependency. Consequently we argue that pupil independency should be regarded as a phenomenon chiseled out within a community of practice rather than a personal capacity.

This study presents an approach to student interaction in self-regulated project work. By combining frame analysis and socio-cultural risk theory, the authors explore the importance of students' framing activities as a basis for their understanding of tasks. The increase in self-regulated work in Swedish schools can be seen as being in line with developments in Europe towards more individualisation. The authors argue that their data provide examples of how the global discourse imposes itself on local discourses. This mode of work, as it appears in the material presented in this article, exemplifies how complex assessment ideas have penetrated the school context. The authors emphasise the concepts of uncertainty, risk and complexity in analysing the framing process, and claim that the focus on these concepts is essential in analysing self-regulated work, contributing to better understanding of self-regulated learning processes.

Be prepared for assessment, be independent, creative, connected, and critical — students doing assessed self-regulated project work face extensive demands. Such work requires considerable capacity to undertake source criticism and think critically. In this article, I examine how secondary school students relate to demands concerning source criticism and critical thinking. Drawing on Goffman's frame analysis and social/cultural risk theory, I discuss how various conceptions of “what's going on” are connected to choices to be made. Various frames that can be related to an overall notion of an opaque and ubiquitous assessment regime simultaneously come into play. In examining dilemmas and analyzing various ways of framing them, I will try to illuminate and understand the obstacles students experience connected with demands for source criticism and critical thinking in project work. Although student handling of these demands can be questioned in relation to how a critical approach is traditionally described, I claim that what we observe can also be interpreted as a rational adaptation to a different framing of what school and education are really about, that is, being a “good student” by doing what is most rewarding in terms of how the school system displays appreciation.