"Språket är tillgång till allt"

Sammanfattning: Title: “Language is access to everything” - A qualitative study of SFI-teachers' experience of the transition to digitalized distance education. Authors: Rania Elwan and Fitore Mehmeti Supervisor: Karin Kullberg Assessor: Maria Bergendal Arvidsson The purpose of the study is to investigate from teachers for Swedish for immigrants (SFI) perspective how the transition to digitalized distance education affects teachers and students within SFI. The study will be based on three questions: What difficulties do teachers within SFI experience with distance learning? What opportunities do teachers within SFI experience with distance learning? How do teachers experience that distance education has affected students? As a theoretical framework, we chose to use Aaron Antonovsky's theoretical model KASAM which is an approach that shows the degree to which one can handle difficult situations and unexpected changes in life. We focused on Antonovsky's three theoretical concepts “comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness” to best explain how the transition to digitalized distance education has affected SFI-teachers and SFI-students. The study is based on six qualitative interviews of teachers for Swedish for immigrants (SFI). The result is collected throughout six semi-structured interviews which is processed and analysed through transcription, thematization and coding. The result of the study shows how the respondents experienced and perceived the transition to digitalized distance education. All the teachers described that the change was perceived as sudden and intense though some of them perceived it as positive and successful. The main conclusion is that the factors that have influenced the transition to digitalized distance education were the teacher and students’ attitude towards change, to what extent are they considered to have strong or weak KASAM, their feelings and understanding of the new situation as well as their own past experiences. It is through these factors that the respondents saw the change as a difficult challenge or not. Moreover, all respondents claim that language is an opportunity for immigrants to become part of the new society and believe, among other things, that it is the best way for immigrants to break the social isolation and become more efficient in the society.