Studying the boundaries of pupil influence in Swedish schools In agreement with steering documents in Swedish schools pupil influence could be defined both as goal and mean, as well as phenomena. Pupil influence is regarded as a human right, since one goal is to foster democratic citizens, and it is consistent with the idea of participation as a prerequisite for learning (SOU1996:22). At general level boundaries of pupil influence is anchored in the complex relationship between individual and society and could be looked up on as having pedagogical, sociological or ideological consequences. This induces us to methodologically handle the perspective of agency and structure and one important question follows; how can pupil influence be studied, defined and understood in context of school? Understood as methodological question the purpose of this paper is to contribute to a discussion on how ethnography, arguing the importance of descriptions of complex social and cultural practices (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007) and inspired of what Willis and Trondman describe as theoretical informed ethnography (Willis & Trondman, 2002) a multiple case study design is possible and might be attractive. A situationalized partial ethnography is preferred for more intensive interpretations (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000). Time is managed as what Jeffrey and Troman calls a selective intermittent time mode (2004, p. 540). The study also departures in critical discourse analysis (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997) to look upon texts and events related to social practice and how agency as well as institutional contexts could be visualized(Lund & Sundberg, 2004). The boundaries of pupil influence could not be defined as the actors own experiences since it could in itself be a limited narrative. The methodological approach is used to strengthen reflexivity in reconstructing the pedagogical practice. Methodology will be discussed in relation to empirical material produced with three schools as cases, a still ongoing study that begun 2007 – 2009. The initial study showed that schools took significantly different approaches to their work with pupil influence and that both learning environment and institutional prerequisites are important.1 This motivates a multiple case study design where the individual cases should be studied to learn about their self-centering, complexity, and situational uniqueness (Stake 2006, p 6). During 2010 and until now new empirical material is produced. At school, two classes with 9 years old and 14 years old pupils are followed. So far the material includes pupils’ letters, group interviews, and observational data, interviews with teachers, managements groups as well as different documents. E-mail contact is also used as method, with the group of 14 year old pupils.