**6. Results**

learning department sets the goal and objectives, while informal learning means the learners themselves sets the goal and objectives [36]. Informal student learning is often defined as mainly spontaneous and incidental. It may occur as individual reflections on teaching or interactions with other students in the classroom or in school hallways, cafeteria and other

Contemporary research notes that school leadership is second only to teaching in schoolrelated factors in its impact on student learning, according to evidence compiled and analyzed by the authors [12]. Changing a school's solid cast and loosening up fixed patterns of relations between actors on different levels demand much work on a long-term basis. A natural first step is to identify the concept of the local school culture and its impact in relation

The cultural analysis on the Arts program at an upper secondary school was predicted on the teachers and the school leader's perceptions of student learning as motivated, contingent and well situated. Central to this perspective was the assumption that students are active learners who reflect upon and may actively participate in investigating their own practice [37]. The aim of the cultural analysis was to conceptualize upper secondary school students' personal and informal approaches to learning, and to determine the extent to which these reflected the effects of teaching and assessment rather than representing stable characteristics of the

Operating out of a theoretical frame that views cultural practice makes it natural to choose ethnography as methodological tool, because ethnography seeks to explain, describe and provide insight into human behavior in context [40]. Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand the cultural experience (ethno) of individuals and groups [41, 42]. A hallmark of autoethnographic studies are the focusing on narrations and descriptions of personal experience in a context Autoethnographic strategy thus provide opportunities for close examination and understanding and dissemination of students engaged in self-reflexive inquiries [43]. In the study of upper secondary school students' personal and informal approaches to learning, I decided to use an autoethnographic strategy of inquiry with letter

The empirical material consisted of 89 letters from three grades of the Arts program in the investigated school, located in a medium-sized Swedish city. In the letters, the students gave an account of themselves, their own experiences and the experiences of another. As a research method, a merit of letters is the quality established and the give and take of an imaginary

This conversation progresses simultaneously on several levels as dialogs within the text of letters by writers with similar voices. These dialogs are well suited for collective studies of pedagogical phenomena in a school, in which different perspectives and aspects visualize.

to the school's internal governance and the degree of self-renewal capacity [38].

places for learning and training [37].

46 Open and Equal Access for Learning in School Management

**5. Cultural analysis**

individual learners [39].

writing as an empirical research methodology [44].

conversation between the researcher and the writer [45].

Qualitative research methods traditionally contain coding and particular data analysis strategies [43]. To achieve empirical soundness a systematic process of interpretation and representation exposed the statements from the letters in three categories of students' self-perceived attitudes and opportunities for learning. The categories were security*, teaching, motivation and meaningfulness*. The analysis identified denotative and connotative meanings with connections of larger structures, forged out of the empirical material [8, 49, 51] When describing their experiences, the students expressed both emotional and analytical qualities, from "emotional learners" [37] to a higher degree of reflecting on teachers' role for students' learning over time. The relations with teachers responded in turn with the students' different types of social and professional need. According to Ref. [52] the interpretation of narratives will tend to reflect values connected to the cultural contexts where they appear. Autoethnographic researchers must anticipate how the expressed emotions may be subjective in data coding.
