Abstract [en]The study takes place in a giant staffroom filled with music teachers - a Swedish Facebook-group for music teachers. The group has 7016 members by the 9’th of November 2020. An estimate is that this Facebook group reaches around 1/3 of the music teachers in Sweden. 

The purpose of the study is to present how teachers use this Facebook group in the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic, to cope with challenges related to teaching music. The activity in the Facebook group increased significantly during March and April before sinking again towards the summer. We have, with the consent of the participants, analysed the 303 posts plus their comments, that directly addressed the corona situation. The first corona-relevant post was made on March 5th and the study analysed all data from March 5th and two months ahead to May 5th. The analysis is both qualitative and quantitative, although the quantitative parts are the most developed.

The Swedish approach on handling the Corona has been quite different compared to the surrounding Nordic countries, and also from most European countries. In spring 2020 the Swedish preschools and compulsory schools kept open while upper secondary and universities transitioned to digital, distance teaching (Pierre, 2020). When Sweden decided to close down parts of society, they decided to only shut down schools for older students from upper secondary [gymnasium] (16-19 year olds) and universities, while compulsory school and preschools stayed open. Parents were strongly advised to keep their children at home with the slightest symptoms though, and the same applied to teachers. Some schools that were affected by the virus decided to close down even for the younger children. This means that in the period we are studying some music teachers teach from a distance, some are still in their classrooms as usual, some are in their classrooms but with only a part of their class in place, the rest being home, some have a class at school they need to teach but cannot because they need to stay home because of symptoms. 

The results show that Corona forced the teachers to reconsider and go back to basics - to make teaching and learning work in new circumstances. Thus the teachers where, spite the extreme situation, still focused on maintaining to follow the syllabus in Lgr11 (Skolverket 2019), Zandén and Ferm Thorgersen (2015) stated that music teachers implemented Lgr11 within a year, which would be 2012, and now in 2020 the teachers face the complex task of not only staying true to the syllabus and for example managing teaching students creativity such as composing music (Mars 2015) but also coping with the many challenges that Covid-19 poses. The results also clearly show the need for a collegiate with whom to brainstorm, think together with and search for support from. Since music teachers in Sweden usually are the only music teacher in a school or even in a municipality the facebook group Musiklärarna could be necessary for collegial support. 

There is a strong collegiality in the group. When we go behind that fact and attempt to see more nuances of the collegiality, we can see through our categories that the collegiality are of different sorts: One kind of collegiality that  is represented by several categories is to search for support for a view or opinion, another is to search for help in solving an educational problem, a third, and related, is to share and spread good educational plans and ideas within the profession, a fourth is to search for support regarding working conditions. A fifth, a meta feature of collegiality, is to be a part of co-constructing a professional discourse - to become a part of the group music teachers in Sweden. 

What will the new normal be when the pandemic is over; what kind of normal will music teachers create in the coda?