Läraruppfattningar om litteracitetsundervisning i svenska för invandrare under covid-pandemin

International migration creates a need for second language (L2) education in majority languages. The language programme Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) offers basic edu­cation in Swedish as an L2 to newly arrived adult migrants in Sweden. The aim of the study presented here is to explore the stability and dynamics of teachers’ beliefs about the education offered to students studying Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults (LESLLA) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is part of an action research project that included teachers and students at four SFI schools. This sub-study builds on individual and focus group interviews with teachers from these schools, which are analysed though content analysis. The theoretical base for the study is the beliefs of teachers and the stability and dynamics thereof. For these teachers, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic meant an abrupt switch from in-person instruction in the classroom to various combinations of digital education and in-person instruction in smaller groups. The beliefs of these teachers remained stable concerning their students’ needs, such as the importance of social interaction, varied exercises and frequent feedback. At the same time, they showed creativity in developing new forms of teaching. The situation was stressful for teachers and a higher level of stability could have allowed them to prioritise in other ways. In these politically and economically challenging times, LESLLA students are in even greater need of efficient and empowering education, not least access to digital tools and competence of high quality. We conclude that the possibilities for the schools of handling the crisis that the pandemic caused depended on the professional competence of individual teachers as well as their ability to act independently.