In Norway, workplaces are becoming increasingly multilingual, and the use of English is more prevalent than ever in the professional sphere (Språkrådet, 2018). Still, Norwegian proficiency is a significant factor in employability and success across professional settings (e.g. Staalesen et al., 2018). In line with national language and education policies (e.g. Innst. 253 L, 2020) and requirements in the professional realm, Norwegian is the dominant language in mainstream VET. However, exceptions exist, and in this paper I explore such a case: A hairdressing class where the teaching materials are in English rather than Norwegian, even though teaching, assessments and the students’ future working lives are mainly Norwegian-monolingual. I report from a VET class in which I conducted linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in 2020-2021. The participants are ten linguistically diverse students and one teacher in the hairdressing program. The teacher reports that the students overall are not advanced English users. Despite this and the Norwegian-monolingual education context, the class uses a mainly English-language digital multimodal learning platform when working with the hairdressing/vocational subject. The platform replaces the subject’s textbooks, and offers a range of resources, e.g. instruction videos, vocabulary quizzes, etc. in English. I investigate how the hairdressing teacher and the students orient to the digital platform in their work with the vocational subject. Core questions are: What are the perceived benefits and challenges of the digital learning resource? Are the affordances of the digital resource perceived to outweigh the (primarily linguistic) limitations and challenges it poses in a diverse vocational classroom? Analytically, the study adheres to a linguistic-ethnographic methodology (Copland & Creese, 2015). The theoretical framing includes language ideologies and elite multilingualism (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019), and Bourdieu’s (1986, 1991) capital. Preliminary results suggest that the digital platform is viewed as an asset in the teaching of the vocational subject, especially by the vocational teacher, despite the language-related challenges some students experience. This speaks to the relative anglonormativity in Norwegian educational settings (e.g. Beiler, 2021). The students’ positions vis-a-vis the platform vary more. The use of the English-language digital platform (and its specialized vocational vocabulary) is arguably incongruent with the linguistic profile of the student group and the established norm of using Norwegian in the classroom. Moreover, it contrasts the formal curricular framework of the vocational program subject, which has a Norwegian-monolingual form and intention.

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