This paper presents and discusses literacy, understood as writing competence, as an integrated part of vocational subjects in the vocational field; Vocation Education and Training (VET) and Vocation Teacher Education (VTE). The paper is based on the results partly from a action research project on teacher education schools, partly on several other research projects related to vocational teachers and vocational teacher educators. The main goal of this paper summarizes findings from these projects to spotlight literacy in the vocational field. Most research has so far focused on work-placed writing or professional written communication (Karlsson, 2009). Research that more directly focus on the integration of literacy practices in vocational education field is comparably sparse (Parkinson & Demecheleer, 2018).

Literacy competencies are important in all professions and in society overall. In a fast-changing labor market, it is necessary to update and develop possessed professional competence in a life-long perspective. To acknowledge communicative competences and language skills as a productive resource for work and professional development is highly valued. To participate in society, to be a part of building democracy and develop critical thinking and attitude, literacy is a prerequisite. To avoid especially marginalization, disclose conspiratory theories and cope with times of uncertainty, competencies in reading and writing are more important than ever before. Against this background Norwegian education authorities in 2006, introduce basic skills like writing, reading and oral communication at all educational levels from primary school to high school, in line with international competence-based educational reforms (Mulder, 2017). This means that all teachers must train and develop students´ basic skills integrated in subjects. This might be a challenge for teachers and trainers who may not regard writing as part of their teaching and training, and/or may not themselves have the competence or attitude required to teach students and apprentices generic writing skills (Hellne-Halvorsen 2014). For many students in VET, explicit and formal training in literacy ends by leaving school by the age of 19 or 20 and thereby their last chance to train competencies in reading and writing. Research shows that many, both student teachers and students in the vocational field, have challenges and lack of literacy competencies (Hellne-Halvorsen, 2014; Hellne-Halvorsen et al., Springer/2021; Hellne-Halvorsen & Spetalen, 2020; Ortoleva et al., 2016).
Writing competence integrated in subjects or technical vocational training indicates an interdisciplinary educational training. The need of writing competence can probably differs between trades, branches and industries. This paper is theoretically based on a sociocultural approach linked to “New Literacy Studies” (Barton, 2007; Gee, 2010; Street, 2003) and perspective on both professional writing skills and generic formal skills (Hellne-Halvorsen, 2014; Hellne-Halvorsen & Spetalen, 2020). Both professional and generic writing skills are necessary to communicate professional vocational competencies to different target groups.
This paper includes teachers and students in two educational levels; VET and TVE and the research questions of paper are: What characterize the writing competences of students? How do teachers deal with writing practices as an interdisciplinary activity?

The research projects which form the basis of this paper, have all social-cultural approaches using different kinds of qualitative and quantitative methods. Each of the project has been published as research articles, one of them as thesis, one in progress (p.t.). Some of the projects combine interviews and quantitative method as mixed methods (Hellne-Halvorsen, 2018; Hellne-Halvorsen & Spetalen, 2020), others are based on either interviews or use triangulation of interviews and observations (Hellne-Halvorsen, 2014, 2016, 2019), and finally, one project use text-analysis of written tasks or cases where students and apprentices were to write a solution to an assignment form stakeholders to costumers etc. The method for this paper is to investigate literacy practices and competencies across these different projects and findings with focus on the place and meaning literacy has in the vocational field. This indicates a meta perspective on relevant and different projects mentioned above, by analyzing these as documents to look for tendencies; similarities and differences among teachers and students at different levels. According to education authorities and modern working life, written communication should be an integral part of VET as an interdisciplinary and boundary-crossing competence, and above all to develop students´ transferable literacy competencies for their participation in society and ability to learn to learn through life (Nägele & Stalder, 2017; Ortoleva et al., 2016). In general, all writing activities in the projects are realized in academic texts related to the VET-field. Due to the linguistic approach, this paper seeks tendencies on different factors in writing competences. To communicate professionally, one must master both professional language and formal, generic or transferable language. More specifically, the analysis focus on double aspects of literacy practices; on the one hand the profession-specific writing such as professional terminology, professional related terminology, professional argumentation, professional text culture and multimodality (Berge et al., 2016), named as P-factor. On the other hand, generic or formal writing skills which includes categories such as orthography, grammar, punctuation, syntax, paragraph, text coherence and text organization, named as G-factor. This analytical approach is aimed at both students and teachers in the two levels of education.

Students and teachers in VET and TVE do use writing a lot, and writing practices deal with different genres. Almost all professions require reading and writing skills to plan and document work processes. In some professions, justifications and documentations may include a combination of writing and other semiotic resources such as photos or filling in pre-defined professional forms as multimodal texts. In other professions, as healthcare, texts are mainly verbal as students and apprentices are trained in writing case reports. Writing activities in VET and TVE primarily mediate student learning and are only slightly oriented to the need of complex working life literacy. Many students have deficiencies of different kinds, especially in incorrect use of formal generic categories such as syntax, sentence, text structure, coherence and argumentation. Students also respond that these aspects of language use are only partly given attention by teachers, and text genre instructions did not correspond to professional genres in working life. In other words, it is a mismatch between training in school context and professional genres used in professional working life. Training formal generic language is depended on teachers own written competencies and many teachers express themselves that they lack linguistic competences. For students in VET, generic writing skills decrease from school context to apprentices, while professional writing skills increase. These findings might have implications and affect communication skills to students in working life and society in general. On the other hand, teachers are professional experts and master the professional part of literacy and writing skills. Teachers only partially meet the requirement from education authorities of integration and develop basic skills in their training. Writing practices are only slightly relevant for students future working life.

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