QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 1999, VOL. 12, NO. 6, 689± 705 Learning the routines: ` ` professionalization’ ’ of newcomers in secondary school TUULA GORDON Department of Women’ s Studies, University of Tampere, Finland ELINA LAHELMA, PIRKKO HYNNINEN, TUIJA METSO AND TARJA PALMU Department of Education, University of Helsinki, Finland TARJA TOLONEN Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland Education systems are expected to enhance both social regulation and emancipation of school students. The contradictions between these aims are visible in the everyday life at school in tensionsbetween control and agency. These tensions are explored in this article by analysing the ® rst two weeks in secondary school, on the basis of ethnographic data collected in the project ` ` Citizenship,DiŒ erence and Marginalization in Schools: with Special Reference to Gender.’ ’ Multilayered processes and practices are involved in the induction of new students. Banal instructions in the ` ` o cial school,’ ’ the construction of diŒ erences and continuities in the ` ` informal’ ’ school, and the ways in which bodies of studentsare placed in the time± space paths in the ` ` physical’ ’ school are explored. The authors ask how school studentsare taught to become ` ` professional pupils’ ’ routinized in the everyday life of their new schools, and how students themselves construct competences through negotiation, withdrawal, or resistance. Introduction In this article we focus on how new students get positioned and position themselves as ` ` professional pupils’ ’ in a secondary school. By the term professional pupil we refer to students who are able to conduct themselves competently without making mistakes or getting into con¯ ict (unless they want to). Initial encounters are processes of establishment (Ball, 1984) when patterns of interaction are not yet ® xed or predictable, and are thus more visible for researchers. The induction of new students into school practices is in many ways banal. They are presented with simple, repetitive guidelines. Informal interaction, processes of constructing di Œ erence and continuity, and the intertwining of these with spatiality and embodiment make the induction complex as well as banal. We want to explore what is the often taken-for-granted social order of the school; we ask how it is made so familiar during transfer to secondary school. The relationship between schooling and society is complex; national education systems have been established in order to educate citizens on their rights, duties, and responsibilities. Schools are expected to exert regulation and to con® rm social relations and also to be sites of social change and emancipation (cf. Donald, 1992). These dual tasks are characterized by tensions and pose contradictions between social justice and inequality. Such tensions are visible in Finnish educational policies. A change towards International J ournal of Qualitative Studies in Education ISSN 0951-8398 print} ISSN 1366-5898 online ’ 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd http: } } www.tandf.co.uk} journals} tf} 09518398.html