This study examines how the themes of Swedish society- and working life are depicted in two textbooks for SFI, (Swedish For Immigrants); Mål 2 and Samspråk 2. Do the students receive a language that is useful for an active life in society and on the labour market through this educational material? Mål 2 and Samspråk 2 have been reviewed partly by a hermeneutic content analysis, partly via two interviews and two phenomenological surveys, targeted towards students, and towards teachers. The interviews of the two teachers show that Mål 2 is suitable for pupils at the C-level and at the beginning of the D-level and that Samspråk 2 prepares the students well for the national and final D-test. The content analysis shows that among the 193 pages of Mål 2, only about 20 deal with the theme of working life, while the societal themes are dealt with in about ten pages, but also occasionally woven into the text. The diversity in today's Swedish society  does not appear in the text, writing tasks are not included in the  textbook and the student is not fully challenged linguistically by the sentence structure in the fictional texts, though the nonfiction texts are more sufficiently challenging. Regarding Samspråk 2, the societal life permeates the text, while the work theme is treated in four chapters of six. The content is clearly inclusive in terms of diversity and the text is linguistically challenging, for some pupils perhaps even too challenging. The survey targeted towards the teachers regarding Mål 2 gave 57 % positive responses and thus 43 % negative responses. Regarding Samspråk 2 there were not enough responses, only three. Regarding the student responses on Mål 2, 79 % of the student responses were positive, while 87 % of the student responses regarding Samspråk 2 were positive.

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Studien har två syften: att undersöka relationen mellan inlärningen av ett andraspråk, i vuxen ålder, och inlärares identitet och att ta reda på om personer som arbetar på SFI, som har kommit till Sverige i vuxen ålder, arbetar identitetsstödjande med språkinlärning eller bemöter eleverna på ett sätt som stödjer identitetsskapandet för eleverna. För att undersöka detta har semistrukturella intervjuer använts och de har analyserats med hjälp av metoden fenomenografi. De åtta personer, som har intervjuats, har alla kommit till Sverige i vuxen ålder och arbetar inom olika yrkesområden på SFI i en mellanstor, svensk stad. I intervjuerna framkom att alla de intervjuade personerna förändrade sin identitet när de var nya i Sverige. Undersökningen visar att det som var svårast var att hitta nyanser i språket och att uttrycka känslor och åsikter på det nya språket. De intervjuade sa att de kopplade sin egen bakgrund till eleverna och bemötte eleverna på ett identitetsstödjande sätt. Det man behöver jobba med på SFI är nyanser och djup i språket, att veta i vilken kontext man kan använda ett visst språkbruk och att jobba med språk och kultur på samma gång. Det skulle fungera identitetsstödjande att reflektera över hur man kan komma in i samhället och bli delaktig. Alla som möter nyanlända behöver bortse från språksvårigheter och istället se människan bakom orden. / The study has two purposes: to investigate the relation between second language learning as an adult and the students' identity, and to analyse if the persons who work at SFI (Swedish for immigrants), who has arrived to Sweden as adults, work to support the students' identity as they learn the languages, or if they treat the students in a way that support their creation of a new/changed identity. To investigate this, has semi-structural interviews been used and they have been analysed with a method called “fenomenografi”. The eight persons who have been interviewed have all come to Sweden as adults and they work with different professions at SFI, in a middle-sized town in Sweden. In the interviews you could see that all the informants changed their identities when they had just arrived to Sweden. The study shows that the hardest point in the language learning was to learn to use the shades of meaning and how to express feelings and opinions in the new language. The informants told that they connected their own historical background with the students' stories and treated them in a way that supported the students' identities. At SFI you need to work with the use of different shades of meaning and go to the bottom with the language. You must also work with how to know where in different contexts you should use different styles in languages and work with both language and culture at the same time. It would work as a support to the identities to reflect on how to get into and participate in the society. Everyone who gets to meet persons who have recently arrived needs to leave the difficulties with the language out of account and instead see the individuals behind the words.

The overall purpose of this thesis and the four independent studies it builds upon is to examine how categorizations and identity positions are constructed and negotiated in the educational program Swedish for immigrants (SFI) both historically and among participants in the program at the beginning of the 21th century. The analytical focus is on the discourses that frame the development of the SFI program with a specific interest in categorizations and identity in relation to gender, language and national belonging. The empirical material includes historical texts (curricula, commission reports, public inquiries, political propositions, laws) from 1965 to 2010, as well as approximately 95 hours of audio and video recorded data and ethnographic field notes from five SFI classrooms. The results are presented primarily in the four articles but partly also in the thesis itself. Our analysis in the first study, that takes a sociohistorical perspective as a point of departure, indicates shifts in discourses with regards to the categories and aims of the educational program, thus, making certain identity positions more accessible than others at specific times. Using the approach of nexus analysis, the theoretical framework employed in the second study approaches language policies n terms of a dialectical elationship between policy and the learning that takes lace in the language focused classroom. Feminist and postcolonial frameworks re employed ore pecifically in the third and fourth studies. The historical nalysis presented in article three shows how the categories of “immigrant” and Swedes” ave been produced and negotiated in discourses on gender and gender quality in the SFI program since the early 1970s. The fourth study highlights he omplex relationship between gender equality and integration policies, as well as he perception of gender equality as a central part of Swedishness”, negotiated in he everyday conversations in the SFI classroom. Overall, the results illuminate he circulation of discourses both cross ime and between policy and classrooms. oreover, it contributes to a critical discussion about the intersection of language, ender and national elonging in the negotiation of boundaries between insiders and outsiders in Swedish society.

Att använda digitala verktyg i språkutbildningen för nyanlända äldre kvinnor kan vara utmanande på grund av språkliga, kulturella och tekniska begränsningar. Denna studie syftar därför till att identifiera och undersöka vilka särskilda utmaningar som kan uppstå vid digital språkutbildning för SFI-elever. Genom att undersöka deras upplevelser och hinder har följande frågeställningar kunnat formuleras, - Hur bedriver SFI-lärare språkundervisningen med hjälp av digitala hjälpmedel för nyanlända äldre kvinnor? - Hur hanterar SFI-lärare utmaningarna med elevernas digitala erfarenheter? För att besvara detta har en kvalitativ metod valts med inriktning ansikte mot ansikte undersökning med semistrukturerade intervjuer som datainsamlingsmetod. Strategin hjälper studien att undersöka individers erfarenheter, attityder och uppfattningar. Data samlades in med hjälp av åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer, där dessa bestod av tre lärare och fem kvinnliga elever som sedan analyserades med hjälp av dataanalysmetod, tematisk analys. Studiens resultat visar att den digitala språkundervisningen kräver en bra planering för att kunna bedrivas eftersom digitala medel ger möjligheten att bistå elever med väldigt mycket information och kunskap. Genom att kartlägga eleverna i klassen kan lärare ge specifika uppgifter till eleverna för att de ska öka motivationen och engagemanget, i och med att det upptäcktes brist på motivation hos de äldre kvinnorna. Med rätt digitala verktyg kan eleverna se egen prestation och utveckling, vilket ökar deras självständighet och självförtroende. Både lärare och elever uppskattar de lektioner där digitala medel kombineras med papper och penna, för att inte bli beroende av digitala medel. Men för att öka den bristfälliga datorvanan uppmanas eleverna till att fortsätta arbeta med datorn utanför skolan. Den dynamik som digitala medel erbjuder i form av bilder, ljud och video är uppskattad av båda parter, då det ökar elevers inlärningsnivå. Eleverna förstår att de kommer att stöta på digitala medel i framtiden såsom i vidare studier eller i ens yrkesroll och för att kunna ta del av dagens samhälle måste de öka sin digitala kompetens genom övning och repetition redan nu i SFI. / Using digital tools in language education for newly arrived older women can be challenging due to linguistic, cultural, and technological limitations. This study, therefore, aims to identify and investigate which particular challenges may arise in digital language education for SFI students. By examining their experiences and obstacles, the following questions have been formulated, - How do SFI teachers conduct language teaching with the help of digital aids for newly arrived older women? - How do SFI teachers deal with the challenges of students' digital experiences? To answer this, a qualitative method has been chosen with a focus on face-to-face survey with semi-structured interviews as data collection method. The strategy helps the study examine individuals' experiences, attitudes, and perceptions. Data were collected using eight semi-structured interviews, which consisted of three teachers and five female students, which were then analyzed using the data analysis method, thematic analysis. The results of the study show that digital language teaching requires good planning to be conducted because digital means provide the opportunity to assist students with a great deal of information and knowledge. By mapping the students in the class, teachers can give specific tasks to the students to increase motivation and engagement, as a lack of motivation was discovered in older women. With the right digital tools, students can see their performance and development, which increases their independence and self-confidence. Both teachers and students appreciate the lessons where digital means are combined with paper and pencil, so as not to become dependent on digital means. But to increase the deficient computer habit, students are encouraged to continue working with the computer outside of school. The dynamism that digital means offer in the form of images, sound, and video is appreciated by both parties, as it increases the students' level of learning. The students understand that they will encounter digital means in the future such as in further studies or one's professional role and to take part in today's society, they must increase their digital competence through practice and repetition by starting now in SFI.

My aim with this study is to investigate the teaching strategies applied in teaching English to students with another mother tongue than Swedish. According to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory, factors such as age, language competence and mother tongue influence can affect language acquisition. SLA theory also states that multilinguals tend to select one of their languages as their primary source of information and this language is the language that most resembles the target language; Swedish and English are both Germanic languages and therefore share language closeness. Results showed that regardless of age and mother tongue, equal numbers of students chose to source Swedish only or both Swedish and their mother tongue when translating texts from English; only 3 chose to source their mother tongue only. There is to date little research that directly connects teaching approaches with SLA, particularly when dealing with multilingualism. I believe a potential area for research could be to investigate the possibility of developing teaching strategies that can potentially harness prior language knowledge. My investigation also showed that English is taught to native and non-native Swedish speakers alike through the medium of the Swedish language; that is to say the course books consist of English text with vocabulary translations and grammatical exercises from Swedish to English. A suggestion would be to reduce the use of the English to Swedish translation methods, particularly for students with a limited knowledge of Swedish, and incorporate into lessons more communicative teaching methods using authentic materials and real situations.

The purpose of this study is to examine reactions on the implementation of a method for word learning among participants in a group of pre-literate students within a beginners’ course of Swedish for immigrants. The learning method uses individual wordlists, based on personal experiences. Data were collected through lesson observations of the group as a whole and interviews with six of the students, and analysed from a pragmatic point of view, with its emphasis on life experience and social interaction as important factors for successful learning. The study focuses primarily on conceptions of activity, participation and motivation. The result shows that the students experienced differences regarding all these factors, compared to their earlier experiences of word learning. Motivation was the most positively influenced factor. When it comes to activity, more time than before was spent on homework. The study also shows that the possibility to exert an influence on the learning process through participation entails a certain amount of doubtfulness as well as increased motivation.

The fact that people tend to alternate between languages for various communicative purposes seems to increasingly interest researchers all over the world. Thus, the linguistic phenomenon of codeswitching has been given more academic attention in recent years than ever before. This particular topic has also been infused by new research because of an ongoing pedagogic debate about whether languages other than the target language should be used in foreign languages classroom or not. The debate consists of two major opinions. On one side, adherents claim that use of non-target languages limits natural target language-input and therefore damages the learning process. On the other, it is argued that non-target languages may even be beneficial for the learning process since they carry many pedagogic opportunities with them otherwise gone lost. This paper aims to find out how, and to what extent, foreign language teachers at a Swedish for Immigrants-school codeswitch into English in class. Moreover, it is also of interest to investigate how they think about their own codeswitching and how their reasoning may reflect their codeswitching self-awareness. In search for answers to these questions, three teachers have been observed in class. Later, the teachers have been interviewed to reflect upon their own codeswitching. The study revealed clear differences in the teachers’ codeswitching and codeswitching-reasoning, However, similarities were also found, and that all three teachers shared the main objective to develop their students’ communicative competence. Moreover, they also proved to have a rather realistic picture their own codeswitching. Not only were they able to roughly estimate how, and how much, they each codeswitched. Their individual results also went in line with their reasoning to a high extent, suggesting that they all have a high degree of codeswitching self-awareness.

The aim of this study is to examine, with a gender theoretical and conversational analytical framework, how teachers in Swedish for immigrants (SFI) distribute positive and negative assessments towards men and women in the classroom and what causes them. The purpose is further to examine how the assessments construct and actualize gender patterns in the education.   The thesis is divided into two major issues: How are positive and negative assessments ​​distributed between men and women in a class at Swedish for immigrants (SFI) and what causes these? How can the assessments ​​be related to constructing and actualizing gender? In order to achieve the research questions, four teachers have been observed in three different classrooms.   The result shows how assessments ​​in classrooms are caused by fostering the students into a gender-normative behavior and also into a desirable classroom behavior. Furthermore, the assessments ​​are caused by evaluating students work efforts in school work. The result also show how women are given more positive assessments ​​and men more negative, even though there are no major differences between how assessments are distributed between male and female students. In total, women are given more assessments than men in the classroom. With the hidden curriculum as an analytic tool, the results show how hidden teaching agendas and the teachers’ assessments to foster the students into these exists within an educational context for adult students. The study has also made visible how gender is both actualized and constructed in the assessments ​​the teachers express in conversation with the students.

Sfi är en skolform inom vuxenutbildningen där det bedrivs undervisning i svenska som andraspråk. Eleverna kan gå tre olika studievägar beroende på skolbakgrund från hemlandet där studieväg 1 är anpassad för elever med ingen eller maximalt fem års skolbakgrund från sitt hemland. Det innebär att i gruppen finns elever som lär sig läsa och skriva för första gången på ett nytt språk. Enlig Skollagen (SFS: 2010:800) har eleven som påbörjar studier på Sfi rätt att avsluta kursen med stöd men vuxenutbildningen där Sfi ingår är undantagna de delar i Skollagen (SFS: 2010:800) som anger särskilt stöd. Läs- och skrivinlärningen ska enligt Kursplanen för Sfi (2018) ske under hela studietiden parallellt med den kurs som eleven studerar. Syftet med studien är att undersöka rektorers uppfattning om vad de anser krävs för att elever med minder än fem års skolbakgrund från hemlandet ska kunna fullfölja sina studier på Sfi. Tidigare forskning har visat att framgångsrik läs- och skrivinlärning för analfabeter bygger på modersmålet, för eleven känt kulturellt och socialt kontexts som gör undervisningen förståelig, meningsfull och motiverande. Metoden som använts för insamling av data är semistrukturerade intervjuer med rektorer från sju olika kommunala Sfi. Intervjuerna har analyserats induktivt med stöd av innehållsanalys. Resultatet visar att rektorerna upplevde att samverkan mellan Sfi, Arbetsförmedling och socialtjänst störs av de olika uppdrag verksamheterna har gentemot individen som försvårar för eleverna att uppnå målen i kurserna. Rektorerna angav att specialpedagogiskt perspektiv och utvecklingsarbete var viktigt för att stödja elevens utveckling. Rektorerna tog även upp det formativa arbetssättet som ett medel att synliggöra elevens progression och kartläggning av behov. För att stödja elevers lärande behöver Sfi, Arbetsförmedlingen och socialtjänsten samverka för att eleven ska uppleva den röda tråden mellan studierna på Sfi och den aktivitet som sker övrig tid. En sådan aktivitet kan vara språkpraktik där eleven utvecklar språket samtidigt med förståelse för olika kulturella och sociala kontext som den möter. För att möta elever olika behov är det önskvärt att Sfi utvecklar inkluderande specialpedagogik enligt Hornbys (2015) teori där eleven får stöd både i grupp och enskilt utifrån elevens behov. / Swedish for immigrants (Sfi) is a school form in adult education where teaching is conducted in Swedish as a second language (L2). Students can take three different study paths depending on the school background from their home country where study path 1 is adapted for students with none or a maximum of five years of school background from their home country. This means that in the group there are students who learn to read and write for the first time in a new language. According to the Education Act (SFS: 2010: 800), the student who commences studies at Sfi has the right to terminate the course with support, but the adult education where Sfi is included is exempt from the parts in the School Act (SFS: 2010: 800) that state special support. Reading and writing learning, according to the syllabus for Sfi (2018), must take place during the entire study period in parallel with the course the student is studying. The purpose of the study is to investigate the principals' perception of what they consider necessary for students with less than five years of school background from their home country to be able to complete their studies at Sfi. Previous research has shown that successful learning of reading and writing for illiterates is based on their first language (L1), for the student a known cultural and social context, which makes the teaching understandable, meaningful and motivating. The method used for collecting data is semi-structured interviews with principals from seven different municipal Sfi. The interviews have been analyzed inductively with the help of content analysis. The results show that the principals felt that the collaboration between Sfi, the employment agency and social services is disrupted by the various assignments the different actors have towards the individual which makes it difficult for the pupils to achieve the goals in the courses. The principals stated that special educational perspective and development work were important to support the pupil's development. The principals also addressed the formative approach as a means of highlighting the student's progression and mapping of needs. In order to support pupils' learning, Sfi, the employment agency and the social services need to collaborate for the student to understand the relationships between the studies at Sfi and the activity that takes place at other times. Such activity can be language practice where the student develops the language at the same time as understanding of different cultural and social contexts. In order to meet students' different needs, it is desirable that Sfi develops inclusive special education according to Hornby's (2015) theory where the student receives support both in group and individually based on the student's needs.