Utfordringer og muligheter i møtepunktet mellom yrkesfaglærerutdanningen og praksis i videregående skole [Challenges and opportunities in the meeting point between vocational teacher education and upper secondary school practice]

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.