Detailed, longitudinal ethnographic approaches that explore how school success and failure evolve as interdependent sociohistorical positions are important for understanding how such processes affect unintended educational inequity in schooling. This study describes how one student comes to inhabit the identity of a disruptive student relative to a classmate who gradually comes to be viewed as the smarter student. Dette studie dokumenterer, hvordan en elev går fra at blive opfattet som en 'dygtig' elev til at blive opfattet som en 'forstyrrende' elev i løbet af folkeskolens mellemtrin. Det sker som en konsekvens af, at en anden elev over tid overtager rollen som klassens 'dygtigste' elev. Sådanne relationer mellem elevers sociale rolledannelser udvikler sig i socio-historisk kontekst. Studiet viser, hvordan longitudinal sproglig etnografi hjaelper os med at forstå og forklare, hvordan relationelle rolledannelsesprocesser kan skabe utilsigtet ulighed i skolen. [Linked identities, smart student, disruptive student, educational inequity] Volume 50, 2019 206conceptions of the smart student as a docile and polite boy who displays the expected school-based knowledge in class. I begin by outlining how success and failure, rather than being characteristics of individual students, can be viewed as interdependent sociohistorical positions in schooling (Varenne and McDermott 1998). This is followed by an account of how the present article employs the concepts of smartness, social identification (Wortham 2006), and participation (Goffman 1986) to demonstrate how students come to inhabit success and failure through what I label processes of "linked identification." The subsequent sections account for the ethnographic study, data analysis, the institutional smart student model, and microanalyses of Iman's trajectory of identification. Finally, I discuss my analytical findings and in the conclusion highlight some implications of the linked identification approach for research and education.
