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The fast-paced changes of the Western world community require vocational education and training (VET) that meets the future working-life needs for competence. One challenge in Norwegian health education is the lack of up-to-date teacher competence in welfare technology and digital competence. This article is based on a case study of how vocational teachers in health education programmes (HO) meet the future needs for competence in welfare technology. This research questions what can be changed in VET with these new technologies and how the technology challenges the vocational content of health and education work, and VET. This need for technological competence is also linked to the renewal of curriculum in Norwegian VET, which entails requirements for previous vocational specialisation. The study involved qualitative methods and development experiments. The results show examples of how vocational teachers and students at HO can meet the future needs for competence in welfare technology related to ethics. The results indicate the need for close collabo­ration between school and working life to meet the new technology-competence need in the content in both the HO education and the health care occupations. Didactical planned intern­ship in companies using welfare technology, were important for the participants learning about digital tools.

In 2020 a new school reform will be implemented in Norway, with required vocational specialisation the first year in upper secondary school. The aim of this article is to analyse challenges and opportunities in the meeting point between vocational teacher education in Design and Craft (YFL) and the field of practice, to meet the required vocational pecialisation. Previous research has established that there is a relevance issue in vocational education and training (VET). There are challenges with a lack of coherence between the vocational specialisation in VET and the work-life needs for competence. The research focus is about coherence between the upper secondary schools' didactical organization in VET programmes for Design and Craft and the content of YFL. The research methods are interviews with VET teachers, and qualitative questionnaires and interviews with YFL students in the period 2014-2017. The results show that there is partly low coherence between the teacher's didactical organization and choice of teaching methods, and the content in YFL. The lack of coherence can be addressed to VET teachers' focus on discipline-based VET with a lack of early vocational specialisation. However, the results also show new opportunities for how to develop more relevant VET for the work-life needs for competence, which is coherent to the occupational-related content in YFL.

Nye vurderingsverktøy som var kjent for elevene førte til økt motivasjon og økt læringsutbytte. Vurderingsverktøyene hadde tydelige kjennetegn med beskrivelse av kvaliteten på kompetansemålene og nivå for måloppnåelse. Stor grad av elevmedvirkning gjennom elevenes deltakelse i valg av arbeidsmåter, egenvurdering og yrkesrelevante kjennetegn bidro til meningsfull og yrkesrelevant opplæring. Artikkelen bygger på et aksjonsforskningsprosjekt (2006 - 2010) om kunnskapsutvikling og implementering av nye læreplaner (Kunnskapsløftet 2006) i Norge. Lav yrkesrelevans og stort frafall i den norske yrkesopplæringen var bakgrunnen for aksjonsforskningsprosjektet. For å utvikle yrkesrelevant og meningsfylt opplæring preget av elevmedvirkning, fra første dag i videregående skole, stod utvikling av lærernes yrkespedagogiske og -didaktiske kompetanse gjennom skoleutviklingsprosjekter sentralt i aksjonsforskningsprosjektet. I aksjonsforskningsprosjektet forsket lærere i videregående skole på egen praksis gjennom utvikling av yrkesdidaktiske metoder som blant annet nye vurderingsverktøy som fremmet yrkesrelevant opplæring. Artikkelen belyser og drøfter hvordan utvikling av vurderingsverktøy med kjennetegn kan fremme yrkesrelevant opplæring og dets utfordringer.