SENCOs’ lived experiences of working through the COVID-19 pandemic in Swedish upper secondary schools

ABSTRACT

This article explores nine SENCOs’ lived experiences of the changes, challenges and opportunities which arose when working in Swedish upper secondary schools through the spring term of 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article provides further insights into the particulars of the SENCOs’ line of work and also aims to say something about the existential aspects of the SENCO profession. The study draws on empirical material generated from semi-structured lifeworld interviews and open-ended diaries. The study design and analysis were conceived and performed using a lifeworld phenomenological approach and hermeneutics. The lived experiences of the SENCOs reveal that they took on new tasks during the pandemic and, at the same time, long-standing issues regarding their professional role seem to have been exacerbated. These findings give insights into the difficulties faced by SENCOs in claiming professional jurisdiction and ask whether SENCOs inadvertently contribute to this problem when driven by a sense of moral obligation towards students with special educational needs. This moral obligation might stand at the heart of what it means to be a SENCO, and is possibly thoroughly intertwined with SENCOs’ agency.

KEYWORDS:

• SENCO
• COVID-19 pandemic
• profession
• lifeworld phenomenology
• inclusive education
• special needs education

Introduction

Special Education Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) are central to the organisation and management of special needs educational solutions within inclusive learning environments at Swedish schools. SENCOs’ remit is to work at individual, group, and organisational levels within school, in cooperation with other personnel and with relevant people and organisations outside the school (SFS 2017:1111). In this article, we focus on nine SENCOs’ lived experiences of working through the COVID-19 pandemic in nine different Swedish upper secondary schools.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on education and educational research, in Europe and globally (Lindner et al. 2021). At several points during the pandemic, upper secondary school buildings in Sweden were closed down and distance education replaced face-to-face tuition to help curb the spread of the coronavirus (SFS 2020, 430; SFS 2020, 148). The Swedish Government first decided to close upper secondary school buildings in mid-March 2020 (SFS 2020, 148), but just 2 weeks later, they decided that certain categories of students were allowed to visit schools, individually or in small groups, as long as they kept their distance from each other (SFS 2020, 115). These categories included students with special educational needs (henceforth: SEN students) so that they could receive the support needed to reach their educational goals. These decisions were taken in line with recommendations made by the Public Health Agency of Sweden (2022). Closing school buildings and administering distance education for upper secondary students had not been done before on this scale, either in the modern Swedish school system (Lindblad et al. 2021) or globally (OECD 2020). It is therefore interesting to examine what these close downs meant for the educational system and the agents within it.

Thus, the aim of this article is to explore nine SENCOs’ lived experiences of the changes, challenges and opportunities which arose when working in Swedish upper secondary schools through the spring term of 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article is the first of four planned articles in a larger study, where the overarching aim is to explicate and understand some of the existential aspects of the professional role of SENCOs, i.e. what it means to be and act as a SENCO. The present article takes a lifeworld phenomenological approach (Bengtsson 2013b) and explores the following research questions: (i) what are the SENCOs’ lived experiences of how their everyday worklife changed during the pandemic? (ii) What are the SENCOs’ lived experiences of dealing with the challenges and opportunities which arose in their everyday worklife during the pandemic?

The SENCO role pre-COVID-19

In Sweden, there are two professions within the student health organisation in schools with somewhat overlapping tasks and missions: speciallärare (SWE, literally: special teachers) and specialpedagoger (SWE, literally: special pedagogues). Special teachers work primarily as classroom teachers with a focus on students with disabilities or students who have special needs in Swedish or Mathematics. Meanwhile, special pedagogues primarily work on organising and managing inclusive and special educational needs solutions at group and organisational levels within schools. However, there is not a crystal-clear demarcation between the professions: they have similar educations and they share, to some extent, both tasks and missions in their everyday worklives (Göransson et al. 2017). To aid the comparison within a European context, we use the British term SENCO to describe the Swedish profession of the special pedagogue. Although the professions of special pedagogue and SENCO are not identical, the similarities between the professions are sufficient enough to justify this (see also: Abbott 2007; Cole 2005; Lindqvist 2013).

Research on SENCOs in a Swedish context prior to the COVID-19 pandemic shows that they work in close collaboration with SEN students and other professionals, both in school and outside of school – these include legal guardians, caregivers, social services, logopaedic professionals and youth- and child-psychologists (Göransson et al. 2017; Klang et al. 2017). To manage their work, SENCOs need to establish and uphold relationships with students, teachers and other agents both inside and outside of school (Aspelin, Östlund, and Jönsson 2021; von Ahlefeld Nisser 2013). Furthermore, SENCOs need to be able to move between different levels in an organisation, from the individual to the group to the school organisation as a whole (Klang et al. 2017; Lindqvist et al. 2014). Consequently, research on the role of SENCOs in Swedish schools shows that it consists of a complex web of tasks and missions on organisational, group and individual levels.

However, research also shows that SENCOs face challenges in their professional role, for example, struggling to define and demarcate their tasks and mission (Göransson et al. 2017; Klang et al. 2017). SENCOs also struggle to prioritise the strategic aspects of their work as their colleagues, governing bodies and others expect them to focus on more immediate and operational tasks (ibid.). SENCOs also need to continuously negotiate their position with colleagues, and the boundaries of their mission and professional role are often in a state of flux. This suggests that SENCOs have a hard time claiming professional jurisdiction (Göransson et al. 2019; Magnússon and Göransson 2019; von Ahlefeld Nisser 2013).

Research on SENCOs’ professional role and mission outside of Sweden primarily centres on Ireland and the UK. This research mirrors the results of research in the Swedish context to a significant extent, both with regard to the remit of the role and the challenges that SENCOs face. For instance, the strategic, inclusive aspect of SENCOs’ role often has to yield to more operational considerations, and there are conflicting views among other professional groups in school about what the role, tasks and missions of the SENCO should entail (Cole 2005; Curran and Boddison 2021). There are also shifting views on whether SENCOs should function more as specialists or generalists, as well as conflicting opinions and expectations between SENCOs, other personnel and parents regarding the boundaries of their mission and role (Curran 2019; Oldham and Radford 2011; Smith and Broomhead 2019). Furthermore, research into the professional development of the SENCO role, which tends to be ad hoc, advocates for more formalisation of the SENCO role at policy level, to enable SENCOs to lead within inclusive special educational settings (Fitzgerald and Radford 2017, 2020).

The SENCO role during the pandemic

The changes and challenges faced by the SENCO profession during the COVID-19 pandemic, as described in the current research, can broadly be divided into three categories. First, new tasks were added to SENCO’s existing workload, meaning their remits became larger in response to the increased pressure of the situation (Clarke and Done 2021). Such tasks included advocating for SEN students who were at risk of becoming marginalised (ibid.); administrative tasks; teaching; directly supporting SEN students; supporting adults; and becoming members of School Leadership Teams (SLTs) (Middleton and Kay 2021). Furthermore, there was an increased focus on mental health and well-being in schools (Boddison and Curran 2021), an area of work which fell to SENCOs to address and which can now be considered a central part of their remit.

Second, preexisting pressures and tensions around the role of SENCOs were highlighted during the pandemic (Clarke and Done 2021). Some research findings suggest that these pre-existing pressures and tensions actually increased during the pandemic (Done and Knowler 2021). Issues such as heavy workloads, reactive firefighting, SENCOs’ inconsistent involvement in strategic planning, and schools’ failure to prioritise SEN students became more noticeable during the pandemic. Further, SENCOs’ leadership around advocacy and engagement in addressing exclusive practices in schools appeared to be de-prioritised (ibid.). In tandem with having to spend time and effort carrying out new tasks, these changes had a negative impact on SENCOs’ capacity to work on the strategic and operational parts of their mission (Middleton and Kay 2021). On top of this, the context of the pandemic made it harder for SENCOs and those in charge of special educational needs to work in partnership. The proliferation of meetings and digital communication has highlighted limitations relating to digital poverty (ibid.). Finally, Middleton and Kay (2021) identified three new elements of SENCOs’ work which challenge both policy and guidance on their role, namely: hands-on work, SLT membership and supporting adults (ibid. p. 228).

Third, issues with the way the SENCO profession is defined and bounded within the school system, and the ways in which special needs education and inclusive education are organised, emerged during the pandemic. Hallett (2022), using the metaphor of ‘bubbles’, argues that, in studying the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in British schools, one could discern different professional ‘bubbles’ being active. Adopting a policy-led framing, Hallett (2022) highlights the risk of practicalities obscuring broader systemic problems in the education of SEN students. In short, research on SENCOs during the pandemic shows that professional roles changed, new tasks were added to that role and certain challenges related to these changes arose.

However, some opportunities also emerged for SENCOs during the pandemic. For example, those SENCOs holding positions on SLTs reported a positive effect on their SENCO mission, citing benefits such as ‘frequent communication, good working relationships and an ethos of care’ (Middleton and Kay 2021, 221).

In addition to the above-mentioned research, Börnert-Ringleb, Casale, and Hillenbrand (2021) noted that a major challenge during the pandemic was cooperation and communication between parents and schools, as well as between colleagues within schools. A further challenge was to create functional school environments in SEN students’ homes, which made socio-economic differences a significant issue (Börnert-Ringleb, Casale, and Hillenbrand 2021; Mercieca, Mercieca, and Ward 2021). Couper-Kenney and Riddell (2021) have remarked that many of these challenges were not directly related to the pandemic but were preexisting problems which were highlighted and sometimes exacerbated by the pandemic.

This article seeks to contribute to the above-mentioned research, offering further insight into the increased tasks and pressures in SENCOs’ everyday worklife during the pandemic. We would also like to shed light on challenges to SENCOs’ professional jurisdiction and what this means for the professional role. Using lifeworld phenomenological theory, building on the work of Bengtsson (2013b); Levinas (1969); Merleau-Ponty (2014) and Schütz (1967), we believe we bring something novel to this issue, seeking to broaden existing perspectives on the SENCOs’ professional role, as well as adding understanding to the existential aspect of what it means to be and act as a SENCO.

Materials and method

The empirical study has been guided by the lifeworld phenomenological approach developed by Jan Bengtsson (1949–2013), called the Gothenburg Tradition (Bengtsson 2013b). The approach is interpretative and specifically developed for educational research, building on Bengtsson’s extensive writing within the fields of philosophy and educational science. The approach strives to let the lifeworld to appear in both theory, methodology and empirical material, while the researcher remains open and empathetic to the ambiguity and non-dualistic nature of the lifeworld as described by Bengtsson (2013b) (cf. Finlay 2009, 2014).

Lifeworld theory and methodology

The lifeworld could be explained as a form of pluralism in which life and world are intertwined and interdependent (Bengtsson 2013b). The lifeworld is where we live our daily life, and it is a world in which we act and where meaning is determined in relation to the individuals which inhabit the lifeworld (ibid). In this study, we have based our approach to the lifeworld on Schütz’s (1967) explication of the everyday lifeworld (ibid).

The study focuses on the lived experiences of nine SENCOs in nine different Swedish upper secondary schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a starting point, we assumed that the COVID-19 pandemic was an event which breached the participants’ natural attitude - when the natural attitude is breached, that which is ubiquitous and taken for granted under normal circumstances is made visible and tangible and, therefore, more accessible for empirical study (Bengtsson 2013b). Lifeworld theory is, at its core, concerned with how everyday life and the world around us intertwine to shape human existence. For instance, to understand and interpret the participants lived experiences of working through the pandemic, we lean on Merleau-Ponty’s (2014) theory about lived body and lived room. In Merleau-Ponty’s (2014) theory the body is both object and subject wherein physical and intellectual aspects are integrated and relates to a world. Consequently, the lived body inhabits the room as a lived room (ibid.) Furthermore, in lifeworld theory, and in this study, the relationships between people are characterised by intersubjectivity (Schütz 1967). Intersubjectivity ‘lives in the tension between the otherness and sameness of individual human beings’ (Bengtsson 2013a, 50). In other words, there is reciprocity between people in the world which we share with each other, and although we never have complete access to our fellows’ lifeworld, we still get some access to it through intersubjectivity. In addition, to analyse the ethical aspects of the interrelations in the participants’ lived experiences of working through the pandemic, Levinas (1969) concept of attending to the Other’s face (ibid.) is utilised. Levinas (ibid) claims that our very capacity for action is rooted in and guided by an ethical sensitivity and moral obligation towards the Other. To further untangle the everyday lifeworld in this study, we have viewed the SENCOs’ professional practice as an expression of a ‘habitual world of practice’ (Bengtsson 2013b). A habitual world of practice is an ingrained, embodied professional practice which, within the everyday lifeworld, is taken for granted and invisible, but is made visible, in this instance, by explicit scientific study. In addition, in this article, we adopt the term everyday worklife, which is built on Schütz’s (1967) theories, to label the specific regional world within which SENCOs perform their work – a regional world which is characterised by its specific existential conditions (Bengtsson 2013a, Bengtsson, 2013b).

Design and methods

The design of this particular study is informed by phenomenological theory (Bengtsson 2013b) and responsive to the ‘holistic nondualist approach to life’ (Finlay 2014, 124) which the phenomenological philosophy represents. The empirical material for this study was generated through the use of semi-structured lifeworld interviews and open-ended diaries (Kvale, Brinkmann, and Torhell 2014; Wildemuth 2017). The empirical material was hermeneutically analysed.

To ensure a rich and thick empirical material suitable for hermeneutic analysis (Gadamer 2013; Gilje 2020; Ödman), 10 participants were chosen through purposive sampling (Patton 2015). To create a heterogenous spectrum of experience, participants from small, medium and large schools; rural, suburban and inner-city settings; and theoretical, vocational and introductory programmes were chosen. The participants all have at least 4 years of experience working as SENCOs, and they all have a SENCO degree. The participants were found to be informed about the research project in three different Facebook groups for SENCOs, which at the time had around 30,000 members altogether. In this information, the above-mentioned criteria for participation were included. Thirteen persons showed their interest to participate, and after an initial screening over email, where questions pertaining to our criteria for participation were included, three persons were sorted out because some criteria were lacking. Following this initial sorting, a first informative and orientational interview was booked to confirm the criteria for participation and inform of the ethical aspects of the study as well as its aim and design. One participant dropped out of the study after the first research interview because of personal reasons leaving the study with nine participants.

The interview method choosen for the study was semi-structured lifeworld interviews. Semi-structured lifeworld interviews allow both researchers and participants to be open, curious and empathetic in relation to each other and the phenomenon under study. Openess, curiosity and empathy are central aspects to phenomenological research (Bengtsson 2013b; Finlay 2014). Three interviews between 60 and 90 min in length were performed digitally with each participant, rendering the total amount of audio material for the study to 26 h and 25 min. The first interview guide was informed by phenomenological concepts and previous research. The second and third interview guides were designed building on the empirical material generated within the research project. All the interviews were listened too in entirety several times. The interviews were transcribed in verbatim. The auditive material is saved on a database at university.

Reflective open-ended diaries were used in the study because, they give the participants opportunity to reflect upon and contemplate their everyday worklife between interviews. The participants wrote diary notations between interviews one and two and between interviews two and three during the spring term of 2021. There were no word limitations in the diaries instead the participants wrote something every week, at least once, during a period of 4 weeks. Each participant wrote somewhere between 2 and 9 pages in their diaries, and the total number of written pages amounted to 61 pages. There were only four questions in each of the diaries, questions that tied into the themes that emerged during the interviews. Two participants did not write diaries for personal reasons but were given the chance to reflect on the questions in the diaries during the interviews. The diaries are saved at a database at university.

The empirical material was analysed using the hermeneutical circular movement as an approach, going back and forth between the whole and the parts trying to move beyond what the participants have said/written and reach a level of interpretation which lays bare that which is implicit in the accounts of their lived experiences (Berndtsson et al. 2007; Berndtsson and Vikner Stafberg 2023; Finlay 2014). The analysis started by immersing ourselves in the material, listening to the whole interviews and reading the diaries and the transcriptions repeatedly. During this phase, we tried to emphatically embrace the voices and the language of the participants, and intuitively (Berndtsson et al.), we started to elicit meaning baring units, which were sorted under different colours. This approach was chosen since it is, at this phase in the analysis, too early to contextualise analytic material under themes; these are first-order interpretations or emic concepts (Gilje 2020). The larger image is still obscured, and the pieces do not yet make a whole. The next phase of the analysis is similar to that which Finlay (2014) calls explicating the whole (p. 129). This is when themes are distinguished in the analytic material. Quotes from the transcribed material were sorted under different themes, with footnotes denoting further ideas for themes, interpretations and initial analyses. These themes were further analysed rendering a few central themes with summarised examples from the quotes, which in turn was further interpreted in the movement back and forth in the hermeneutical circular movement. At this point, the focus was on the final analysis of the empirical material where we explicitly took help from the phenomenological concepts which could help us elicit the existential aspects of the participants lived experiences. This is what Gilje (2020) refers to as second-order interpretations, or etic concepts, where the researcher’s own concepts are used to further the analysis of the phenomenon under study. The lived experiences of how ethics and moral guided the participants were interpreted with the help of Levinas (1969) concept of attending to the face of the Other, while intercorporal and interspatial aspects of the participants’ lived experiences were interpreted with the aid of Merleau-Ponty’s (2014) theory of lived body and lived room. Furthermore, the lived experiences of changes in the everyday work life of the participants were interpreted with the help of intersubjective relationships according to Schütz (1962, 1967) and habitual world of practice as proposed by Bengtsson (2013b). During the whole process of interpretation and analysis in the hermeneutical circular movement, we were guided by the principles of subjectivity, mercy and suspicion (Gadamer 2013; Gilje 2020).

There are some important limitations to the study which needs to be addressed. First when performing hermeneutic analysis one has to be made aware of one’s own horizon of knowledge (Gadamer 2013; Gilje 2020). Otherwise, misunderstandings and misinterpretations which commonly are rooted in one’s own prejudice or preconceived notions can obfuscate the participants' statements, thereby failing to catch the participants’ aim, content and intentions (Ödman 2007). Second, the goal with hermeneutic analysis is not to create ‘correct’ interpretations but to create interpretations which can be tested against the empirical material as a whole to see if the interpretations are reasonable and sufficient (ibid). A further limitation to the study is the theoretical approach and the methodology. Since the study is qualitative, with few participants, the focus is not to reach conclusions on an aggregated level that are generalisable. On the contrary, the aim is to seek in-depth knowledge concerning these nine individuals’ lived experiences of working through the COVID-19 pandemic. However, even though generalisability is not an aim of the study, the explanatory power and the transferability of the results between persons and settings might be very strong lending the study heuristic and practical qualities.

Results

Recognising changes and surmounting challenges

The lived experiences of the participants show that their workloads seemed to increase during the pandemic. More students and new categories of students needed support, and the situation required many additional meetings with students, teachers, caregivers and other relevant agents. On top of this, SENCOs seem to have been required to take on new tasks during the pandemic, such as coaching students about exercise, sleep, food and how to create a functional school environment at home. A further lived experience was that workloads seem to have been additionally burdened by the need to come up with ad hoc solutions for in-school education to support those students who, for various reasons, were unable to study from home.

SP3 (Study Participant #3, interview)”: And then there were a lot of new students who absolutely did not need help when they were in school but when the distance started, I suddenly got/ … /new ones that I did not know, but who just felt that it works so badly from home”.

The lived experiences of increased workloads exhibited a challenge in itself, but distance education seems to generate further challenges. These included what seemed to be an increase in mental health issues among SEN-students, and more students falling behind in their studies, both of which seemed to create more work for the SENCOs according to their lived experiences.

SP5 (interview)”:There are so many who say that they have lost … both their mental well-being, they have lost concentration, they cannot bear to get up, it (their motivation) just kind of falls, their whole day with routines./ … /there are very many who have fail-warnings, (i.e., in the risk of not getting a pass on the course) they have tasks which they haven’t done. It has never been like this before, with so many students who then have to take, retest, retests and retests”.

A further lived experience among the SENCOs was that socioeconomic differences between students seemed to become more apparent during distance education and, at the same time, under these conditions the school seemed to be less able to fulfill its commitment to levelling the differences and treating all students equally.

SP2 (interview)”:I think it’s very easy to end up there (in need of support). Especially if you do not have someone at home who can help you. And the students have very different opportunities/ … /in the group of students we have, I know that many of the parents do not have the opportunity to work remotely, for example. Then, the students are by themselves, or there are many siblings at home and such./ … /So, it is not equal, it is very unfair … ”

In addition, long-standing challenges regarding the role of the SENCO seem to have been amplified according to the participants’ lived experiences, such as the de-prioritisation of preventive work, which seem to have been cut back to a bare minimum. Instead, their work seems to have involved an increased amount of firefighting, with SENCOs trying to resolve issues in real time. The SENCOs’ lived experience suggests a feeling that the boundaries of the profession have become less clear.

SP9 (diary): “At the moment I basically only work with firefighting, saving students who are at risk of not getting grades or getting their upper secondary diploma. Everything is done ‘only for the moment’./ … /and even though it is gratifying that you manage to save some students who are on the ropes now, it was not the goal I had for my future profession as a SENCO!/ … /I do not want to be without the student contact but the balance between this and the tasks that I believe I should do is basically non-existent./ … /I can be ashamed that I do not set clearer boundaries for what I should and should not do. Because since I do not do it, I am involved in eroding the SENCO-profession, which I do not want”.

Furthermore, tasks related to the intersubjectiveness of relationships and the embodied experiences of the professional role, such as ‘reading a room’ of peers or giving comfort to a sad student by means of eye contact or physical contact, were not possible under distance education arrangements according to the participants lived experiences. Establishing new, trusting relationships with new students therefore became a challenge. The SENCOs tried to compensate for this lack of shared lived rooms in school via digital means, which turned out to work to some extent but not as well as when sharing a lived room in school.

In short, according to the lived experiences of the participants, they seem to have dealt with the changes and challenges that arose in their everyday worklife during the pandemic by taking on increased workloads and a greater volume of communication through an array of digital means. Furthermore, according to their lived experiences, they appeared to have reprioritised their tasks and mission, stretching beyond the usual boundaries of the SENCO profession.

Responsiveness to opportunities

SENCOs’ accounts of their lived experience during the pandemic also highlighted an aspect of the professional role which was described as being ‘responsive to opportunities and move forward a little further (SP8, interview)’. For instance, SENCOs lived experiences include intentions of continuing to make use of digital means of communication such as online meetings, group chats and text messages with SEN students and colleagues. The SENCOs also had lived experiences of better and more efficient communication digitally with parents and legal guardians, as well as with external agents, such as social services, municipalities and child- and youth-psychologists. The lived experiences of distance education also seemed to have fostered teacher/SENCO-collaboration around coaching teachers and some aspects of teaching and lesson planning, such as developing elucidating lesson plans, for example.

Interpretations of the everyday work life of the SENCOs during the pandemic

When interpreting the lived experiences of the participants, it seems that the habitual world of practice was disrupted during the pandemic, re-forming the everyday worklife of SENCOs. In this reformed everyday worklife, new tasks were added, and old issues regarding the professional role of the SENCO were exacerbated. In addition, the intersubjective relationships, which before the closure of school buildings was described as a central premise for SENCOs’ agency, were compromised. This could, if becoming permanent after the pandemic, develop into central parts of the SENCO remit, potentially changing what being and acting as a SENCO entails. The reduced quality of these intersubjective relationships seems to emerge from the absence of lived bodies sharing a lived room (Merleau-Ponty 2014) as expressed by the SENCOs. The SENCOs tried to compensate for this using digital means, which worked to an extent but not fully. However, digital meetings with caregivers, parents, legal guardians and other professions outside of school seemed to function better, more efficiently and had higher attendance than prior to school closures. This may suggest that such meetings do not depend on a well-developed intersubjective relationship but rather focus on information exchange.

A further interpretation of the SENCOs lived experiences indicates that they expanded their remit and professional role by taking on new tasks, which may have blurred the boundaries of the profession. It could be argued that this expansion reflects a sense of justice and moral obligation towards the SEN students. Levinas (1969) claims that when our agency is guided by our sense of justice, our relation to others takes on a moral character. In such instances, our actions are not guided primarily by instrumental and/or practical issues, such as policies, institutions and roles (Morgan 2020) – but by the ethical demands of attending to the face of the Other (Levinas 1969). Our interpretation suggests that the moral obligation towards the SEN students is central to what it means to be and act as a SENCO.

The lived experiences of the participants also seem to indicate that it is difficult to completely substitute for in-school education using digital, distance educational solutions. A particular finding which supports this conclusion is that new categories of students became in need of support during the pandemic. In addition, the informal support which previously helped students largely disappeared during school closures. There seem to be no explicit structures for these informal aspects of the everyday lifeworld in school – they are intertwined and usually taken for granted. We would suggest that when students were at home they did not participate in a shared lifeworld, even though they were logged into the same website. The void between students and school staff became an existential rift which the schools failed to bridge when the habitual field of practice was disrupted during distance education and no longer was conducive to intersubjective relationships.

According to the lived experiences of the SENCOs, differences in the socioeconomic aspects of students’ social worlds (Schütz 1962) became a factor during distance education. The SENCOs tried to compensate for this inequality between the students, using digital means and distance support. However, this proved inadequate, and SEN students had to be allowed back into school to receive the support they needed.

Discussion

SENCOs’ professional role seems to depend on a well-functioning web of intersubjective relationships to uphold and create agency in their everyday worklife. Inhabiting lived rooms as lived bodies seem to enable the SENCOs to create and uphold these intersubjective relationships. The informal parts of the everyday worklife in school appear to be integral to this to work. These results might tell us something about what it means to be and act as an SENCO. It seems to be a profession in which existential aspects, such as intercorporality and intersubjectivity, are paramount for it to fulfill its intended purpose. This is also in line with the results by Aspelin, Östlund, and Jönsson (2021); Göransson et al. (2017) and von Ahlefeld Nisser (2013) even though their approaches do not explicitly consider the existential aspects of the profession. In this study, we suggest that the theoretical and methodological approaches reveal novel insights into the existential aspects of the SENCO profession, which previous studies have not been able to lay bare.

Furthermore, new ways of communicating and performing meetings with other professions and parents/caregivers in online environments seem to work well, aiding the SENCOs in their everyday worklife, as also noted by Middleton and Kay (2021). Moreover, reflecting the argument posed by Börnert-Ringleb, Casale, and Hillenbrand (2021), in-school-education seems to be very hard to substitute for with distance educational solutions. In particular, schools seem to have a hard time levelling socio-economic differences among students when using distance educational solutions, something which other researchers have also highlighted, for example, Mercieca, Mercieca, and Ward (2021) and Middleton and Kay (2021).

In addition, as suggested by Clarke and Done (2021) and Done and Knowler (2021), long-standing issues regarding the professional role of the SENCO seem to have been exacerbated during the pandemic. As observed by both Middleton and Kay (2021) and Clarke and Done (2021), new tasks were added to the everyday worklife of the SENCO, potentially expanding the remit of their role.

Finally, SENCOs’ moral obligation to SEN students seems to be central to their choices of tasks and missions in their everyday worklife and further, central to what it means to be and act as a SENCO. This is particularly interesting considering earlier discussions about SENCOs’ ability to claim professional jurisdiction (Curran 2019; Hallett 2022; Magnússon and Göransson 2019). In conclusion, we pose a question: might SENCOs’ moral obligation towards SEN students inadvertently undermine efforts to uphold their professional jurisdiction? SENCOs seem to transcend professional boundaries while attending to the face of the Other (Levinas 1969), to fulfil a perceived moral obligation to their students. However, a fluid boundary and an openness to the ambiguity and pluralism of the everyday worklife might be exactly that, which gives SENCOs the agency they need to fulfil their intended purpose.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the feedback given on this article by the Society of Lifeworld Phenomenological Research at the University of Gothenburg

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.