”Uppdrag: Snorpolis” : Förskollärares syn på sitt uppdrag under pandemin

Sammanfattning: The purpose of my study is to increase knowledge about preschool teachers' views of the pandemic's impact on their profession. The study aims to achieve the purpose with the help of a qualitative data collection through semi-structured interviews consisting of eleven open-ended questions to the participating seven professional preschool teachers. The study attempts to answer the question what impact the preschool teachers have experienced that the pandemic has had on how they perceive their mission. Another question that is tried to be answered is what changes and opportunities for their professional practice that preschool teachers have come to pay attention to during the pandemic. The results of the study shows that the preschool teachers who worked during the pandemic believe that the profession has adopted a more service-oriented focus and teaching has been deprioritized in favor to produce more care for the children. The preschool teachers describe themselves as “flu cops” who have taken on the role of assessing whether the children are healthy enough to be in preschool, at the expense of a good interaction with the guardians. Other important conclusions in this thesis are the importance of the flexibility that preschool teachers possess through their professional profession as well as how preschool teachers' perception of what's best for the children.