This thesis examines how studentship and teachership are constructed and reinterpreted in everyday interactions within the Vehicle Engineering Programme at an upper secondary school. Socialisation and identification processes are analysed in relation to the school’s mission, student strategies, and industry expectations through ethnographic observations of and interviews with students, occupational teachers, and industry representatives.

The purpose of the thesis is to understand how studentship and teachership are constructed and reinterpreted in dynamic processes within a Vehicle Engineering Programme by studying local socialisation and identification processes in everyday interactions at the school.

The overarching purpose has been broken down into the following research questions:

- What are the key actors and activities involved in the socialisation of students, auto mechanics, and vocational teachers within the automotive programme?

- What preconceptions, norms, and values do the school, teachers, and automotive industry communicate in terms of what auto mechanics should be like, and how is this interpreted by the students?

- How do automotive technology teachers, industry representatives, and automotive technology students see and construct themselves in relation to careers in the automotive industry?

The study shows that studentship is shaped both by the school’s selection activities and by the students’ own group-based norm creation. The teachers sort the students based on gender, performance, social behaviour, and expected employability, even as they also relate to industry demands in terms of competence and the right sort of occupational identity. This creates a differentiated student culture in which some students are mobilised towards prestigious positions in the industry, while others are marginalised or develop resistance strategies to manage their position in the school hierarchy.

Teachership is characterised by the tension between a professional identity with practical roots and an academised role as a teacher. Theoccupational teachers interpret the demands for professionalisation in different ways, which gives rise to hybrid identities and varied forms of resocialisation. The local context is also affected by the logic of the school market, where competition for apprenticeships and collaboration with the industry contribute to status negotiations and exclusionary processes.

The thesis shows that the Vehicle Engineering Programme is not only a place for occupational training, but also an arena in which societal inequalities are reproduced through selection, categorisation, and status processes. At the same time, this reproduction does not occur mechanically, but rather is interpreted and reflected in the interaction among the school, students, and industry. The study thereby elucidates how occupational training contributes to the shaping of social positions and inequalities in the Swedish education system.