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This article analyses what students attending four Swedish upper secondary school programmes with different social class profiles tried and wanted to influence in relation to mathematics teachers' pedagogic practice and responses during the year 2008/2009. The theoretical framework is based on Bernstein's theories regarding power and control. The analyses draw on ethnographic observations of classes taking the Natural Science and Social Science academic programmes, and the Vehicle and Child and Recreation vocational programmes, at two Swedish upper secondary schools. Students attending different programmes tried to influence the teaching. However, what the students taking the academic and vocational programmes were able to influence considerably differed. Generally, the vocational students exerted influence more successfully when they wanted to reduce the pace and difficulty of teaching, than when they wished to get more out of their education, while the opposite applied to the academic, especially Natural Science, students. Thus, the power relations reflected the programmes' social class profiles and the students' expected positions in society, despite policies at the time to promote democracy and reduce social reproduction in education. The findings support the importance of analysing not only students' voices, but also their voices in relation to the pedagogic practice they encounter.

A key feature of the Swedish upper secondary school reform of 2011 (GY11) is the new direction it sets out for the organization of vocational education (VET) and the role it plays in youths' transitions from school to work. This study analyses the GY11 reform in terms of its impact on the organization of knowledge in VET and its implications for students' prospects of transitioning from VET to work or higher education, and for their roles as citizens. To understand its likely consequences, GY11 is analysed in the context of practices in a school class for the Vehicle programme steered by the curriculum prior to GY11. The theoretical concepts used are drawn from Basil Bernstein and his distinctions between knowledge organized into horizontal and vertical discourses. The findings of the study suggest that GY11 reinforces an already strong emphasis on horizontally organized knowledge in VET by placing great importance on strongly context-bound, skill-oriented knowledge. This implies a stronger exclusion of VET students, primarily with working-class backgrounds, from vertical discourses and limits the possible transitions of youths taking the VET-route by reducing their access to higher education and their capacity to function as both workers and citizens.