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Since vocational teachers not only mediate theoretical and practical knowledge, but also ideals concerning the professionals’ personalities and actions, the aim of this study is to analyse if and how these ideals influence the highlighted challenges of teaching. The study is drawing on a social constructionist perspective; the method used involves 17 qualitative interviews. The challenges mentioned were as follows: lack of motivation, language and cultural factors, low status of the occupation and plagiarism. Underlying ideals rooted in the health care sector were that students should become a carer because of an inner desire. Moral and ethical values were other ideals that underpinned themes such as dealing with plagiarism and the problems experienced with non-native Swedes. An underlying fact is also the low traditional status of the nursing assistants, a challenge the teachers try to handle without effective tools. In the order to understand the challenges and handle them, the teachers construct categories of differences. This is visible when the categorisation of students is made based on motivation and ethnicity. The findings highlight the importance of courses

The aim of this study was to examine didactic principles in health care teachers' description of their teaching practices, and how these principles were intertwined with vocational knowledge. In addition, characteristics of a health-care didactical approach were explored. Theoretical framework was based on Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective and Lave and Wenger's situated learning. 17 health-care teachers, working with adolescents or adults, were interviewed. The findings showed that vocational knowledge and didactic principles were often intimately intertwined. Didactic principles were dialogicity, work-links, variation, relational environment and language development. The healthcare didactical approach highlighted the development of students, both as health-care givers and as persons, through interactions with teachers and peers, and the teachers acted as boundary-crossing role models. The health-care didactical approach also involved the students' language development. Issues that need to be reflected on are if the emphasis on feminine-coded vocational knowledge is too strong in relation to the programme objectives, and if reading and writing as teaching forms are too marginalised.